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The Grumpy Grammarian

A former colleague periodically sends me e-mail in which he complains about some practice that he believes to be proof that proper use of the English language is deteriorating.  He is a self-appointed bloodhound, who enjoys sniffing out incorrect usage in print and speech.  He knows that I'll be sympathetic; I can be quite outspoken about linguistic practices that annoy me.  He and I belong to a generation who believe that correctness matters, who still respect people who know how to speak and write correctly, and who become annoyed with those who show little respect for language.

However, my friend very often focuses on some trivial practice that, while common, is not particularly offensive to me.  For example, he complains about people who say "gonna" instead of "going to" ("I'm gonna watch TV tonight").  I would never approve of gonna as a written word (except in dialogue), but I think we must make some allowances for oral shortcuts such as gonna.  Besides, if we go after gonna, we must also wage a vendetta against hafta (for "have to") and useta (for "used to").  We shall devote all our energy to harping about trivialities when far graver offenses should be addressed.

Where on the spectrum of incorrectness does an error fall?  It is simplistic to declare that all grammar and usage errors are equally offensive because they are, after all, errors.  That's sort of like giving the same weight to a parking violation as to reckless driving.  Yet there's no real consensus on what constitutes a minor error and what constitutes a major one.  Every language maven has certain pet peeves – abuses that have the effect of fingernails on a blackboard.  The intensity of these peeves may even change over time as a particular abuse becomes more common.  (Currently, one of my chief peeves is the ubiquitous use of the wordy and often redundant phrase "when it comes to.")

About the only point on which we linguistic fussbudgets do agree is that correctness matters, and perhaps we can agree that we'll allow certain liberties in speech that we wouldn't permit in writing.  Though I know it's wrong, I am less likely to pounce on someone who says "between you and I" than I am to criticize someone who writes "between you and I."  Even the best of us will occasionally blurt out a solecism such as that; however, if such an error occurs in writing, one is likely to conclude that the author has not merely slipped up but is ignorant of the rules for case of pronouns.  We have a higher standard of correctness for writing than we do for speech because usually the writer has time and opportunity to spot errors and correct them.

I am therefore far more tolerant of the way people talk than my aforementioned colleague is.  To be sure, certain practices – such as young people's use of like several times in every utterance – make me want to shake some sense into the speaker, but I'll excuse many lapses on the grounds of "colloquialism."  With writing, however, I am less forgiving, and the frequency with which some basic errors appear makes me subscribe to my colleague's belief that hardly anyone cares about correct usage anymore.

We self-designated grammar cops should focus on those mistakes that are very basic yet alarmingly common.  If we nitpick about relatively obscure rules and minor lapses in speech, we shall be like the police officer who arrests jaywalkers while a bank robbery is taking place around the corner.

We should certainly take a cudgel to people who fail to distinguish between it's amd its or their and there.  Such errors are inexcusable, and anyone who makes them is ignorant, unobservant, a scofflaw – or all three.  There's no excuse for confusing possessive and plural nouns and for using such nonwords as mens and childrens.  These and other abominations of that ilk are common enough that we should browbeat people about them.   They are far more important than whether someone carefully enunciates "going to" or says "gonna" instead

The trouble, I believe, with nitpicking minor infractions and bad (but common) speech habits is that non-grammarians will take us even less seriously than they already do.  If we make a big deal about trivia, we shall get the same reaction as parents do when they make too many rules for children – they won't obey any of them, and they will begin to break rules just to scoff at us.  (By trivia, I mean such things as the fading distinction between shall and will.  And, though I've objected to it in the past, I think we need to start accepting the use of hopefully to mean "I hope that . . . .")

Even more misguided are the efforts of some schoolteachers to insist on rules that aren't rules at all.  They rant about not beginning sentences with because, not splitting infinitives, and not ending a sentence with a preposition.  Ironically, these same people apparently don't teach the difference between their and there.  One can't help wondering where their priorities are.

Since priorities differ among serious grammarians who try to eschew being nitpickers, what are mine?  First, I try to correct those fundamental infractions that violate a central principle of the language:  the its/it's, there/their confusion, for example.   These are words that have entirely different meanings and functions.  Besides that, they are words that we use every day, yet they are widely misused, despite clear-cut distinctions between them that even a ten-year-old should be able to grasp.