In my last review I came upon a grammatical query when I had to make United States a possessive. I knew there was some rule that applied here. When a word ends in an s and you must make it possessive, sometimes you simply add an apostrophe and sometimes you add 's. Which was it?
That's when I went to my bookshelf and pulled out Patricia O'Conner's book Woe is I. Right there in Chapter Three ("Yours Truly") was my answer.
If the word is singular, always add 's, regardless of it's ending. (This is true even if the ending is s, z, or x- whether sounded or silent). Thus, the word Kansas as a possessive would be Kansas's.
If the word is plural and ends in s, add just the apostrophe. So cops as a possessive would be cops'.
Since United States is plural, I simply added an ' for United States'. Now my review was a little more grammatically consistent with present day standards. Later in the same review I would run up against a proper name, Rayns. This time I did not need to run to my bookshelf because I had clarified this matter already, Rayns as possessive is Rayns's since it is singular and ends in an s.
Many more helpful grammatical hints are provided throughout this book. Although most writers seem to swear by Strunk and White's (If two people possess something in common, consider them a single unit and put a single 's at the end) The Elements of Style, I always found the book a more difficult one with which to engage. O'Conner's book is a much more joyful read. Her writing is clear, concise, and addresses all the twists and turns that emerge in each category, such as the parenthetical in this paragraph. However, where Strunk and White's book sounds too much like an English class taught from a distant lectern, O'Conner presents her prose as if she's sitting across the table from you. Strunk and White's book is still a valuable resource, but I personally come to O'Conner first if I can.
The book is separated into ten chapters. The first, "Woe is I", helps you with your pronouns. Is it that or which which troubles you? If you can drop the clause and not lose the point of the sentence, use which. If you can't, use that. Also, a which clause goes inside commas. A that clause doesn't. With that said, we now know I should have written Is it that or which that troubles you.
The second chapter, "Plurals Before Swine", deals with proper plurals. Here you'll discover that when someone with a Ph.D. in English meets his colleagues for drinks at the pub, they have Ph.D.'s.
The third chapter has already been discussed. As we jump to the fourth, "They Beg to Disagree", we look both ways before leaping to make sure our verb tenses and conjugations are correct. I have a friend who wishes he were better at this. There's a peculiar, wishful kind of grammar for talking about things that are desirable, as opposed to things as they really are. When we're in a wishful mood (a grammarian would call it the subjunctive mood), was becomes were.
The title of the fifth chapter is "Verbal Abuse". Here we are scolded for our constant misuse of certain words, e.g. e.g./i.e.. She even has a few not so kind words for those who have a lack of email "netiquette".
The mistake in the last sentence I wrote up there, (and several others throughout this review), is pointed out in the sixth chapter, "Comma Sutra," (and corrected right there). Periods and commas stay within quotes while colons and semicolons stay outside quotes. The other punctuations are trickier.
Flipping through the next chapter, O'Conner discusses "The Compleat Dangler." Of course, she is not here with me right now so she could NOT be "flipping through the next chapter." Woe is I for dangling a gerund that so blatantly mistakes O'Conner as the flipper rather than yours truly.
"Death Sentence" is a chapter you should seriously consider. It provides meaningful dialogue regarding cliches such as "seriously consider" and "meaningful dialogue."
And if you were told that you were not to begin a sentence as I just did, check out "The Living Dead" for the rules that have been amended or vetoed by an ever evolving language.
"Saying Is Believing" finishes the chapters by making sure we follow her credo to say what you have to say and stop when you've said it.
And O'Conner will help you do just that. Her book can help you clear up that memo, impress that client, and close that deal. I have found it extremely helpful in numerous occasions.
But I also have some problems with this book. Although she admits language changes, she still appears to be holding on to some rules longer than necessary, like a stubburn daytrader who imposes structure upon the random nature of the stock market. Case in point, she tells us using their when we don't know if it's his or her is poor grammar because their is plural when the sentence requires a singular possessive pronoun. Many linguists are now arguing that our use of their has become so commonplace that the rules have changed. Many of us have been looking for a gender neutral pronoun and we have appropriated one.
We have a precedent for this. Thou no longer uses thou, does thou? You was initially delegated to the status of second person plural, whereas thou was second person singular. If I was speaking to one of you, it was one of thou. This changed, for whatever reason, and now their has changed to be as appropriate as his or her.
What O'Conner doesn't talk about in her book is that chosen language standards are based on who has power. As much as one may argue for sticking to the grammatical rule of his or her over their, when the choice of his or her is presented, we too often say his. This presents a male-centered world. This skews our view. My generation, encouraged by rule renegades before us, saw this as something that needed to be changed. And we have changed it. O'Conner chooses not to see that, for now.
To her credit, sometimes O'Conner does acknowledge that language changes, as in Chapter Nine. But what she doesn't acknowledge is that she is presenting for us the grammatical rules of those in power. These are the rules we must abide by so that those above us, be it in economic status, job hierarchy, or politics, do not perceive us as lesser in intelligence. However, if one uses different grammar than you, it doesn't mean they are of lesser intelligence, it just means they use different grammar. Still, if you want to move up in your job or engage in debate with the powers that be, it is helpful to know their rules. But do not accept these rules as set in stone. I concur with Sausurre that language is arbitrary. The double negative is not wrong because a negative plus a negative makes a positive, the opposite of what is intended when a double negative is used. That is not an inherent law. If one is to argue that a double negative is inherently incorrect, then one has declared French, Spanish, Italian, Russian, Hebrew and most other languages as inherently incorrect languages. Multiple negatives take place in French all the time and are examples of well-spoken French. Someone arbitrarily decided English should follow the logic of mathematics. The only reason this was confirmed as correct is because that person, and those who confirmed it, had a position of power that held weight over those who used double negatives.
I make this point because grammar comes up often here in Epinions. Sometimes, when someone points out a different way to say something, it can be helpful. If I would have gone ahead and 's-ed the United States and someone would have written to me about what is more standard usage, I would have appreciated that because I was curious about that from the beginning. And if it didn't matter to me, I'd shrug my shoulders to the information, but I'd let them know I appreciate the offering of assistance. However, that is often not what is intended by whom I will call "The Grammar Police." Too often it is an issue of abusing power. They can attack someone around their grammar simply because they can. The corrections are not offered out of kindness, they are simply meant to put someone down. That is not helpful; that is simply mean.
My purpose here is to introduce a valuable resource for those who want assistance with their grammar at Epinions with the caveat that, although the author at times purports differently, this is not the definitive word. This is the grammar of Standard English, which is subject to change. As linguists joke, the Standard form of any language is the dialect of those who possess the Army and the Navy. "Peter, would you kindly bring me some water" used to be said, in the old standard of English, as Peet-tah, would you kindly bring me some wah-tah. FDR said We have nothing to fee-ah but fee-ah itself. Now, in present Standard English, we don't fee-ah anything. But around the country, Hawaiian pidgin, Black English, Bostonian, Pittsburghese, Minnesotan, and other dialects are valid forms of English. So is an immigrant from Korea L-ing their R's. Don't let anyone tell you otherwise. I have simply provided you with a way to avoid the Grammar Police if you so choose.
But if you could care less about the Grammar Police and your Epinion includes so-called grammatical mistakes and you don't care, then, as a Minnesotan would say in Standard Minnesotan, "Whatever." I won't care either. I'll push myself to read you as you write, not as I expect you to write. Sure, I might miss some things. Although some might not like it when we do this, we make up grammar and words and spellings as we go along. O'Conner argues that "the fact that a word can be found in the dictionary doesn't make it acceptable [Standard] English." Maybe, but the corollary stands as well: Just because a word is not in the dictionary doesn't mean it's not acceptable Standard English. We verb nouns and noun verbs to play around with language, surprising ourselves with new meanings. When you write Pilipino, you are telling me the Tagalog language has no f sound. When you write womyn, you mean something very different than if you wrote women. To [sic] it is what's really [sic]. Yes, your creativity with language might be confusing at first. I might not know hella from aight when you kick it. But, perhaps with more exposure I'll be chillin' wichya. That's the unspoken facet of a grammar bashing. The grammar basher has chosen not to stretch themselves to understand the person they bash. Their loss, aight? Whomever they are, he or she. Peace.
I have no sympathy with the criticism which would treat English as a dead language - a thing crystallized at an arbitrarily selected stage of its existence, and bidden to forget that it has a past and a future.
Language was made before grammar, not grammar before language.
Thomas Hardy
The Return of the Native
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