May 2007

We grammarians can be passionate about grammar – obviously, since that passion is what made us grammarians in the first place. However, we should not expect people who want merely to learn how to write or speak more effectively to share our enthusiasm for parsing sentences, labeling the parts, and analyzing structure. Nor do they need to. If we overanalyze or overexplain, they will become impatient, frustrated, or bored. It's a bit like what many of us feel when a computer expert explains too much about what's going on in the machine when all we want to know is how to use it properly.

It is helpful – and sometimes essential – to know something about the process, about how the system works – whether that system be a computer program or a language. For this understanding, some knowledge of terminology is necessary. We're obviously going to be severely handicapped in writing if we don't know what nouns and verbs are and what their function is. Going further, we may have difficulty writing coherent sentences if we cannot at least parse the structure enough to identify the subject and predicate. How much further do we need to go?

In my own teaching of writing, I have found that structural analysis carried to the extreme can be counterproductive. More advanced students – and those rare creatures (budding grammarians) who enjoy taking sentences apart to see how they work – may benefit from advanced lessons in syntax, but most students become increasingly confused when bombarded with technical terminology. For that reason, I teach them about the "backbone" of the sentence (Subject --> Verb --> Rest of Idea) and try to avoid unnecessary complications. The vast majority of muddled sentences become that way because those three parts of the backbone do not connect logically, and the sentence is out of joint.

Though it might be desirable to be more sophisticated than this, my students typically have not learned even this much in twelve years of school. Therefore, instruction in other matters – even something as simple as the difference between direct and indirect objects – is a leap too far. Besides, we can write effectively without going there, whereas we cannot if we fail to recognize that the relationship between the subject and predicate is illogical or nonsensical.

Certain terms are worth learning and teaching because they relate directly to the production of effective prose. For example, knowing about active and passive verbs is useful because active voice is more direct and concise, whereas passive voice is best used when circumstances offer no other option (as in the second half of this sentence: "is best used"). As an analogy, we must know the function of the steering wheel, brake, and accelerator to drive a car, and it may be useful to know something about what is under the hood. However, only a mechanic needs to know all about how the engine works.

Unfortunately, even traditional grammarians push grammatical terminology or rules and analysis of syntax beyond reasonable boundaries – that is, beyond the point where they are of much value in helping people to express ideas well. Those who do so apparently subscribe (consciously or unconsciously) to a "grammar for its own sake" philosophy. That's fine for grammarians, who love to dissect sentences the way (I presume) aspiring biologists love to cut open dead creatures and examine their entrails. However, many of the details that fascinate grammarians are irrelevant to more normal people, who just want to learn how to write well.

Some traditional grammarians (and not a few schoolteachers) even "invent" rules that shackle writers. These rules usually begin with "Never . . . ," as in, "Never begin a sentence with Because." (As a consequence, college freshmen routinely begin sentences with "Due to the fact that" and "On acccount of.") Ironically, people who are taught these "nonrules" and who approach writing with all this prohibitive baggage have often never learned basics that matter, such as the difference between there and their or between then and than.

Even more detrimental and distracting are those approaches that pick language apart for no apparent reason than to . . . well . . . pick it apart. Some of the gobbledygook written by these folks confounds even people who have studied and taught grammar all their lives. Imagine the effect on a novice.

The people who do this – the so-called "new" grammarians, whom I choose to call pseudo-grammarians – love to lay out all the bits and pieces in a confusing array of parts and even invent new labels for these parts. In a language thousands of years old that has been studied for just as long, they somehow manage to "discover" new qualities that have gone undetected by generations of traditional grammarians. It is not enough for them to define a verb, to say whether it is transitive or intransitive, and to identify voice, tense, and mood. They must also identify its "aspect" (or some such) so as to categorize every nuance of the verb's function. Nothing has any meaning to them unless it can be categorized and labeled. The explanation that context determines function gives them the heebie-jeebies. Grammar trumps sense, including the form of sense that the rest of us call "common sense."

Treating grammar as an abstract, multidimensional puzzle may be great fun for these pedantic purveyors of trivia and may even make them feel superior and more "modern" than those of us who still apply more traditional grammar, but one must challenge the usefulness and relevance of such endeavors. In all this picayune parsing, the purpose of grammar is apparently forgotten. These pseudo-grammarians do not seem to care whether their approach helps anyone to write better or to communicate ideas more clearly.

Fewer and fewer students understand what they are doing when they try to write. They lack the tools that basic grammar provides and thus have difficulty composing coherent sentences. The solution is not to create some new grammar or to supplement traditional grammar with new rules and terms. We must teach the traditional grammar that has served writers well for centuries, taking into account those few changes wrought by the evolution of the language. Traditional grammar may need some adjustments, but it does not require a total overhaul.

There's a motto – KISS – Keep It Simple, Stupid. It's not really for stupid people, so I prefer to say, "Keep It Simple, Students." Admittedly, an understanding of language and grammar can never be very simple, and I'm not suggesting that we try to make it simplistic. What I object to is making language and grammar more complicated than they need to be, introducing irrelevant and useless concepts that confuse more than they clarify. It's futile to expect students to derive as much fun and fascination from the study of words and their relationships as we grammarians do, but we can at least make the task less burdensome by emphasizing what is purposeful and practical.