Wow. I totally agree. There are a few "rules" that I get way too excited about—but only in professional settings. Otherwise, I care a lot more about the variety of English. As long as I can understand what someone's saying, how they say it is of little importance.
And I also agree that there should be some standard. If there weren't, it would be hard to communicate and, again, that's my main concern.
Anyway, when you said this was a rant I almost didn't read it because I expected it to be very angry and very long. But then, it was perfect and I read it all the way through (admittedly, it wasn't very long).
I have to admit, I correct people mentally when they end sentences with a prepostion or say "less" when they mean "fewer." But I have to be pretty close with someone to correct people out loud.
I agreed with almost everything here.
Except for the part about a subordinate that, because I don't know what that means. Would you care to explain?
JB: I guess I use the term "rant" loosely. It was prompted by some things that make me upset, but I wasn't exactly foaming at the mouth while I wrote it.
TB: But ending a sentence with a preposition is not an error! I guess admitting you have a problem is the first step to overcoming it, though. And the second step is me hitting you over the head with a copy of Merriam-Webster's Dictionary of English Usage—but only because I love you.
Porteiro: What I'm talking about is cases where you have an optional "that" introducing a clause, like "I said that I knew him." The rules of English grammar allow you to drop the "that" in such cases. Some people, however, mistakenly believe that you must omit the "that" here, meaning that "I said that I knew him" is wrong and "I said I knew him" is right. It's completely ridiculous.
I've never heard the injunction against subordinate "that." How irritating. I think that it makes such sentences much easier to parse.
This is a fantastic blog, Jon. I wish you would publish a book of collected essays like these. I would buy two copies and tell friends to read it.
I'd never heard that particular nonsense rule until just recently, when I read about it on Language Log (I don't remember if it was a recent post or part of the archives). Someone wrote to one of the authors to say that he was taught in high school that it had to be omitted whenever possible. Complete rubbish. I think it should be kept more often than not; journalists love to drop it all the time, but I think that it leads to a lot of easily avoidable misreadings.
Unfortunately we weren't able to make it tonight (as you probably gathered by now). We'll have to get together with you guys some other time.
You use "they" with a *singular* antecedant? [throws Strunk and White at head] Not, umm, that I'm one of those uptight, misguided faux-grammarians or anything.
Someone has been editing "that" out of my writing lately. It makes me sad.
Oh, goodie, another copy of Strunk and White to burn!
It's alright, Brozy—there's hope for you yet. All you have to do is start reading Language Log on a regular basis. You'll be cured of your grammatical misconceptions in no time.
Jon, you're definitely more of a linguist than a grammarian.
I don't believe in place either the letter or the spirit of the law higher, FWIW.
No, no, no. That's not the correct response! That would be, "Well, when you're as great as Shakespeare, you can break all the rules of English grammar and usage too." Followed by an explanation that one must first *learn* all the rules before one can determine when it's ok to break 'em.
I think you're assuming that Shakespeare thoughtfully considered whether it was okay to break the rule and use they with a singular antecedent. I think you're also forgetting that it wasn't until well after Shakespeare's time that people suddenly decided—for no good reason—that such usage was wrong.
Certainly, many great writers break the rules of their craft to great artistic effect, and no one thinks that "[anyone] sang his didn't he danced his did" because e.e. cummings didn't know the difference between an inflection and a noun phrase.
However, prescriptivists are fond of invoking some sort of bygone golden age of grammatical purity, when men were men and women were women and pronouns that take singular antecedents were pronouns that take singular antecedenets. A little research will reveal that many commonly criticized grammatical constructions have existed (*unmarked*) in the English language for centuries, even in the works of the greatest writers (i.e. "they" with a singular antecedent in Shakespeare). Where, exactly, are these rules coming from, if they're not based on the language usage itself?
What's more interesting are the things over which earlier generations of prescriptivists wrung their hands. A century ago, some people were aghast at such phrases as "the picked fence was dilapidated" and "hopefully, my exam won't be very hard." If you don't see what's "wrong" with those phrases, it's because we've moved on to frying a different kettle of arbitrary fish (and because there was nothing really wrong with them in the first place).
Should be "pickeT fence." Sorry.