On the standard of English
I am writing here not of the restoration of ‘good English’; of, for example, eliminating convolute expressions such as ‘a number of’ (which calls for a singular verb but almost all use with a plural) in favour of the much simpler ‘several’; of not using ‘decimate’ where ‘destroy’, perhaps ‘devastate’, is called for or ‘hopefully’ where ‘I hope’ is ; &c. ad nauseam: no, that is a lost campaign, another war.
What I should like to bring to the attention of ‘journalists’ and bloggers — indeed anyone that writes for a general readership (and many that write for specialized ones) — is the need of their work to conform to acceptable standards; not only so as to avoid actual errors but for two more important reasons: to prevent them from seeming foolish and to ensure that their writing be worthwhile (sc. understood by the reader). What is required is not what I should call good English; merely English good enough to get its author through a modern school examination: a G.C.S.E., an A-level or a bachelor’s degree.
(You’ve heard of the student that wrote his scripts in alphabet soup and was awarded a Batchelor’s degree.)
A few days ago I wanted to ‘re-tweet’ a Twitter message that ought, I thought, to reach certain eyes. The meat of it was a link to the author’s own site so, as that would be the substance of my re-tweet, I read what he’d written there. O misericorde ! The text — the standard of English — was just so bad that I could not in all conscience trouble my select camp of ‘followers’ with it.
That I chose not to re-tweet his message is neither here nor there; what he had to say, however, will not get through even to those that read it. They’ll give up. The odd literal will be forgiven but, when a reader encounters a stream of gross errors of both grammar and logic (as in so much modern writing he will), he gives up: loses interest, especially on the Internet, where the ‘attention span’ is known to be quite small. (Still with me ? Good.)
Reading such work — and it applies almost equally to the printed word — leads me to the conclusion not only that it has not been copy-edited (whereof more in a minute) but also that the writer himself has not even bothered to read it through before issuing it. Does this mean — as it certainly implies — that the writer holds his readers in contempt; that he actually cares not a jot what they think of his work ? Likely not. Logically not: why would one even write something, if indifferent to the opinions of one’s readers ?
What to do ? I’d like to suggest that everyone have his writing copy-edited before publishing. Unfortunately that element of the process fell by the wayside with the emergence of desk-top publishing. Two steps that can be taken, however, with almost no cost in time or money are these:
- The writer must read his work through, ensuring above all that it makes sense; that the text flows logically and nothing has been omitted. I’d be dishonest not to acknowledge how, in one’s own work, it can be hard to spot mistakes in general and the transposition of medial letters in particular. (In that linked article, by the way, Matt Davis uses the term ‘external’ to mean terminal; ‘internal’ stands for medial but is readily understood.)
- Some-one else — any-one — should read the work, looking for errors (perhaps obviously) but, more to the point, to see whether he understands it.
I have read this through, even using an HTML test page; does that make it without sin? No. (It has not been formally copy-edited.)
Here endeth the lesson. More of a plea really.
ΠΞ (Pericles ; his mark)
February
24, 2011 at 18:06I too try my best to use correct grammar and to avoid spelling mistakes but
sometimes they creep in. It would seem that typing ‘thsi’ rather than ‘this’
is a new favourite of mine. One trouble for me is that I write on three or
four PCs across different operating systems and browsers so the spell checking
is not always as it should be. It upsets me when I spot a spelling mistake in
an old article but should I ‘stealth’ correct it or not?
February 24, 2011 at 19:36Is that not the advantage of having your work in the form of an
electronic file ? Minor corrections can be made … with annotation
where they concern data and their analysis. Had you published it on
paper, it would be set in … well, ink if not stone ; it is not
inherently dishonest to correct earlier work.If, on the other hand, you do it as the C.R.U. at East Anglia and all
their chums in the a.g.w industry do — so as to falsify the data and the
implications thereof — it’s a different matter.ΠΞ
February 24, 2011 at 00:05er… what’s wrong with ‘hopefully’?
Am I the only one who yearns to rehabilitate the subjunctive?
- February 24, 2011 at 13:00
[‘Hopefully’ : I responded to Richard B’s similar
comment.]The subjunctive is interesting. Those whose aim in life is to
‘simplify’ language (sc. to eradicate the rules of grammar rather than to
apply them) always try to eliminate it ; it always comes
back. The subjunctive was not devised by some musty old professor just
to keep teachers and examiners in jobs : it’s needed by ordinary
people to express particular ideas … a mood, if you like.ΠΞ
February 23, 2011 at 22:55A most excellent article and good comments too.
I wish I could write
like what you lot do
February
23, 2011 at 22:34I would agree with everything, with one small caveat: the use of
‘hopefully’. The use of ‘hopefully’ to mean ‘I hope’ is so common as to be
entrenched, and it has precedents. We are quite happy to say ‘frankly’ when we
mean ‘I wish to be frank’.‘Hopefully, we will arrive in time’ and
‘Frankly, I am not
interested’seem to me to be exactly parallel, and if one is incorrect, then both are.
Other examples might be ‘surely’, incredibly’, and so on.I was a teacher of English for 18 years, and an examiner at O/GCSE level.
When I gave it up in 1995, I was still teaching grammar and correcting
mistakes (in a helpful way, I hope/hopefully), but I was one of a dying
breed.- February 24, 2011 at 12:41
I’d explain it so : ‘in a helpful way, hopefully’ means that
you presented your corrections in a helpful — as against a dictatorial — way
and hoped your efforts would be effective ; ‘in a
helpful way, I hope’, on the other paw, that you hope your
corrections were seen as helpful (rather than dictatorial). These
subtle distinctions are key to the precision of which several here have
written.I cannot understand such fill-words as ‘frankly’ and ‘to be
honest’. When I hear them — as so often and perhaps not surprisingly
from a politician or another having to explain the inexplicable — it makes
me wonder about the truth in what the speaker has already said.ΠΞ
February
23, 2011 at 21:54Guilty as charged M’Lud. Unfortunately I don’t feel I could ask anyone to
copy-edit my writings as it would be too much of a responsibility for them.
Friendships are too valuable.I do agree there is problem in education today when I hear young people
calling the ground the floor etc. As for pronunciation…- February 23, 2011 at 20:33
In writing this article I had rather hoped to avoid sterile arguments about
grammar (v. the first paragraph). Sterile ? Well,
yes : partly because, thanks to decades of ‘progressive’ education,
the whole subject of grammar is almost, for most to whom English is mother
tongue, a book with seven seals ; partly because the observance of
accidence and syntax is seen by many as nothing but élitism and discussion of
the subject turns in to a thinly disguised class war.(I happen to think élitism no bad thing ; that our society — and
in this term I compass the World — has suffered hugely from a belief that
standards ought to come from the bottom rather than the top. We have,
unfortunately, come through the Age of Enlightenment only to find ourselves in
the Age of Incompetence : an age in which the ability to do things
properly (except in such things as soccer and darts) is regarded with
contempt. I like the way Lincoln put it : “You cannot make
the poor rich by making the rich poor.”)The article was aimed simply at begging those that intend to publish work
(in any form) preferably to have it copy-edited but, if they did nothing else,
at least to read it through before releasing it — as much as anything else
because of desperation at finding material that I’d like to quote (by virtue
of the underlying thoughts) but cannot owing to the standard of its
presentation.ΠΞ
February 23, 2011 at 19:56Perhaps serious Bloggers should purchase a special keyboard?
One that signals “Are you sure, are you really sure, you want to publish
that Post”?
February 23, 2011 at
19:58
February 23, 2011 at 18:18Pericles, are you Greek? I ask because you spell ‘specialized’ with a ‘z’.
Only a Greek or an American would do that. If not, what does your ‘Ξ’ stand
for?- February 23, 2011 at 20:47
Heavens, no ! I chose the handle — rather than the name of my
real hero, ‘Aristides’ — in the hope that, there being so many references to
Pericles on the Internet, I should be able to lose myself in
anonymity. (Pseudonymity ?)Your reference to American English raises an interesting
point : where a difference is found between (cultured) American
English and the British variety, the American is usually correct.The suffix ‘-ize’, as clearly you know, is derived direct from the
Greek ; why, some time in the 20th. century, the British decided
to follow the German orthography (‘-isieren’) and substitute an ‘s’ I have
no idea.Ξ ; ΞΑΝΘΙΠΠΟΥ, the patronymic of Pericles.
ΠΞ
- February 23, 2011 at 20:53
You remind me, incidentally, that I was there three years ago, driving in
to Athens (from Patras) on a lovely Friday afternoon. By noon Saturday
the place was at a stand-still : heaviest snowfall in forty years
or so. Spent much of Sunday buying winter clothing !
Walking on Pentelic marble in snow and ice is not fun.ΠΞ
February 23, 2011 at 17:59This is not an excuse as I am perhaps the worst blogger in the world for
poor punctuation and stragulated grammar.English is a language that has never ossified, my endeavours with
Anglo-Saxon have taught me that. Certainly American English and English are
parting ways in both meaning and spelling.I read somewhere this morning that a public official was hauled in over
here use of the word faggot. The served based in the US ‘threw a fit’ when the
word was used in an email. The meaning of the word faggot being slightly
different here, meaning a bundle of sticks or a meal made from offal.The Academie Francaise may be trying to ossify French, but the english
language is constantly developing.Anyway as I said, no excuse for my failings.
February 23, 2011 at 17:20“merely English good enough to get its author through a modern school
examination: a G.C.S.E., an A-level or a bachelor’s degree.”Given my opinion of the standard of modern exams, I could really have a
good time with that statement.As for the difference between a colon and a semicolon, consider Ronald
Reagan before and after his bowel operation.
February 23, 2011 at 16:46ARGH!
I just realised. My reply didn’t just have a spurious bit, it’s
completely garbled! I had added to the phrase to make a sentence, “there is a
number of cows” then carefully worked from there. But despite careful reading,
having lunch, then re-reading, at which time I am sure it was correct, before
clicking the submit button some chunks are totally missing and some bits
appear to be displaced. If that happens betweenthe tex being sent and landing
then minor grammatical oddities are fairly irrelevant.
February 23, 2011 at 16:15Anna mentions in a comment above that she has improved since blogging but I
think in general standards have dropped; I believe keyboards and speed are to
blame: the brain reads the word and the mind ‘hears’ it. The problems arise
when a word is pronounced with the same sound and examples are – in my opinion
– becoming not only more common but also more ‘tragic’: beyond mere typos. A
few examples, the more common ones first:there/their/they’re
your/you’re/yore
to/too/two
know/no
waist/waste
(yes, believe me!)…and so on.
February 23, 2011 at
15:37“anyone that writes”………”who” for people; “that” for things
“many that
write”……………ditto
“those that read it”………….ditto
“not only so as to
“………….”so” & “as” superfluous and clumsy
“everyone have his writing
copy-edited”…….should be singular “has” or could have been written in
subjunctive ie everyone should have…..10/10 for the balls to write your piece:- must try harder
- February 23, 2011 at 16:24
No, your Worship : ‘that’ is definitive ; ‘who’ and
‘which’ descriptive.I agree : ‘so as’ could have been omitted.
In ‘I suggest that everyone have his writing copy-edited’ the verb have
is in the subjunctive. Not only is ‘should’
unnecessary : it would alter the meaning. Wanting to say
that, I’d drop the ‘I suggest that’ and say simply ‘Everyone should have
…’.ΠΞ
- February 23, 2011 at 14:29
Sorry, a spurious “you wouldn’t say” jumped in there.
I also checked on
dictionary.com under ‘number’. example sentence was :-
“A number of people
were hurt in the accident.”- February 23, 2011 at 16:23
In that particular colon, woodsy42, I was not addressing the use
of collective nouns ; only the use of unnecessarily involved
expressions. Nevertheless — now you’ve raised it — the rule applies
generally, not just to ‘a number of’. Certainly that phrase itself is
not a noun but within it ‘a number’ is the subject of the verb ;
that is why a singular verb is required. Likewise a group, a team, a
crowd and so on.ΠΞ
February 23, 2011 at 14:25Bad typing combined with poor grammar often implies I do not spoke good
England innit.- February 23, 2011 at 14:23
This is a fascinating, and very pertinant article, although I’m afraid I am
going to take exception to your example of “a number of”. I’m by no means an
expert but I don’t think it does automatically call for a singular verb.
Indeed I think “are” is correct and sounds more correct in many contexts
because although “a number of” appears singular it actually means a plurality
of animals, you wouldn’t say. But more importantly I think English is far more
subtle and complex than having such a rigid rule.
I would suggest that the
use of “is” or “are” is available to the writer as a device to provide further
meaning. It helps define whether the main subject is the entirety of cows or
whether you are concentrating on a specific sub group, you can match the “is”
or “are” to either “a number of” (singular) or “cows” (plural).
For clarity
I’ll put it in a phrase “there is a number of cows”.
If “a number of” is
being used as ‘vague-speak’ for “herd” or “group” it is replacing a singular
nown, so “is” would be correct. The phrase would simply mean “there is a group
of cows”.
But while “number” is a nown” the phrase “a number of” is not
actually a nown, it’s a phrase. It can mean, and be substituted, by the word
“some”, in which case it’s matched to “cows” (plural).
So the phrase may
mean “there are some cows”.
That’s the subtelty because while both can
devolve to “a number of” choosing “is” or “are” re-establishes the
difference.
To illustrate further I’ll add some more to the
sentence.
There is a number of cows with yellow ear tags.
or
There
are a number of cows with yellow ear tags.
Take your pick, I prefer the
second because I’m talking about cow’s tags not the actual number.
Discuss
- February 23, 2011 at 16:19
…are these known nowns or unknown nowns?
February 23, 2011 at 16:43It’s pertinent… not pertinant!
- February 23, 2011 at 14:11
TimOfEngland evokes an idea I often have when reading modern
material : that I’m acting as its unpaid copy-editor.
Sometimes I feel I ought to send the publisher a bill.Engineer reminds me of a belief I’ve long held : that
engineers make the best <insert the trade/profession of your
choice>.ivan points out the apparently insuperable barrier to
improvement : the fact that the teachers and lecturers of to-day
themselves are the product of an educational system failing those it claims to
serve.Another important point he raises is the desirability of expressing oneself
concisely. How often one hears or reads material in which an
idea is expressed comprehensibly but then repeated re-phrased ;
why ? Why, moreover, does everything have to be
doubled ? Peace and tranquillity, for example : what
fine distinction makes such an expression necessary ? Why must
adjectives be qualified by ‘very, very’ (a phrase rarely far from the lips of
some politicians) ?Ed P mentions the precision of language. This is something
at which engineers are usually good because precision is part of their
work. Although some speakers and writers presumably know no better, even
amongst those that likely do the attitude abroad seems to be ‘O well, close
enough for government work ; they’ll know what I mean’.PT’s little solécisme noir — about some-one’s being
killed after a supposedly fatal event — is one that ticks me off no
end. I really don’t think his attitude pedantic : he’s
reading or listening to a report and expects it simply to reflect what
happened.That Jeremy Poynton’s efforts to correct work on ‘CiF’ is resented
does not surprise me : typically the left — at least a large part
of it — would think him élitist.For the problem we have been discussing to be addressed, we need to direct
funding away from unnecessary tertiary education toward thorough, old
fashioned primary education. Were this to happen, enough would still go
to college by virtue of having, on entry to secondary school, a proper grasp
of the basics, enabling them to take advantage of it.Cannot go without saying how much I enjoyed the poetry and other
humour.(Sorry : not very concise, eh ? The least I could do,
however, after your contributions to the debate. Thank you.)ΠΞ
February 23, 2011 at 12:23thay! Aaaghhhh. Typo, honest, guv guv guv
-
February 23, 2011 at 12:22 Would you employ a brickie who couldn’t stick bricks together? No.
Similarly, if someone is incapable of converting thoughts in their head to
comprehensible English, because thay have not been taught the basic building
blocks of their native language, would you employ them?Immense damage has been done by removing formal grammar from the
curriculum. And Latin, whose less irregular grammar than ours can provide a
firm basis in understanding how languages hang together. I’m a grammar,
spelling and punctuation fascist, but one who recognises that as time flies
by, my grammar is not what it was. Spelling and punctuation not so bad, but I
need to sit down with a grammar primer and get my teeth into some pluperfect
subjunctives I think. And one who, having huge great clumsy fingers, produces
typo after typo.One thing I have observed doing my regular stints fighting the good fight
on CiF, is that the Left gets less and less educated by the year. I have
started providing a service in which for the more impenetrable posts, I
translate them into English for everyone’s benefit.Doesn’t always go down to well, for some odd reason.
February 23, 2011 at 12:01Although I have little formal education in English grammar, I am irritated
by TV journalists’ failure to understand the meanings of simple words such as
‘after’, and their frequent misleading placement of words or phrases. An
example might be “A mother and child were killed after being hit by a lorry
standing in a bus queue.” Q1 – OK then, after being hit by the lorry, who or
what actually killed them? Q2 – Why was the lorry standing in a bus queue
anyway? Of course I’m just being pedantic and literal, but the careless and
sloppy approach of those who supposedly use the English language
professionally still grates. Don’t they have editors and proofreaders to weed
out such errors?
February 23, 2011 at 11:03Decimate, of course, means “remove one in ten”, not reduce to one
tenth.
It’s subtle differences, like uninterested vs. disinterested, that
modern usage is blurring.- February 23, 2011 at 17:17
I agree with the ‘correct’ interpretation of decimate, but I’ve also seen
that definition listed as obsolete, with the more common usage being to
destroy a great number.
February 23, 2011 at 10:47One endeavours to ensure that one’s English is always correct, but even I
sometimes make mistakes. Such mistakes in legal documents can, of course, have
horrenous consequences.
February 23, 2011 at 11:21They are not mistakes, Prime Minister. They are features.
- February 23, 2011 at 16:42
‘Horrenous’ features, it would seem…
February 23, 2011 at 10:08There is a significant failing in modern education, and it can only be
addressed by a return to the old-fashoined values of correcting mistakes in
spelling, grammar, punctuation and vocabulary, together with a lot more
essay-writing.In my walk of life, confusion caused a poor piece of writing can have
serious consequences; sometimes commercial (loss of time or money), sometimes
potentially endangering life or limb. I was never formally taught how to
convey information – which might often be complex and nuanced – accurately and
concisely, but it was something that older engineers tended to take great
pride in. An ability to do so whilst under pressure of time is an essential
skill for us.One example of excellence in this field were the older British Standards. A
great deal of care must have been taken to ensure that these were clear,
concise and precise. Sadly, in updating these to harmonise better with our
European and International colleagues, some clarity has been lost.Unfortunately, one thing that we engineers lose (or perhaps never develop
in the first place) is the ability to write with style. None of us, I suspect,
would claim to be paragons of virtue in the spelling and grammatical stakes,
either.
February 23, 2011 at 10:42I could not agree more. Way back in the dim and distant past at
university we had a segment of our lectures that dealt with writing reports
and how to say what you needed to say clearly and concisely, in fact that
built on what we were taught in school.Being a qualified teacher as well as an engineer, my comment on modern
education is that it leaves everything to be desired. There is no way it can
improve until we get teachers that know how to write and spell and how do we
get them from the students that the system is producing today?
February 23, 2011 at 09:47Thank you, I couldn’t agree more.
Even fairly reputable bloggers make howlingly-awful mistakes which
undermine – for me, anyway – their entire arguments. Many times I have read
some post which has me nodding sagely and saying to myself yes, he’s on to
something, this is a good point – and then comes a greengrocer’s apostrophe, a
really gross split infinitive, or a sentence that has been half-edited and
left for dead so that it makes no sense at all. The effect on me is that I end
up thinking “this guy is obviously an ignoramus, or possibly just plain
careless, I don’t care for his argument after all”; which is probably unfair,
but the effect is there.More haste less effect, people!
- February 23, 2011 at 10:12
I sometimes felt, whilst reading reports, that some engineers considered
it their calling to boldly split infinitives that had never been split
before.
February 23, 2011 at 11:38“To boldly go” as kids we heard.
It stirred some thoughts in budding
nerd.Not thoughts of grammar fault alerts,
But female trekkers in short
skirts.- February 23, 2011 at 12:17
I ‘boldly go’ each passing day
To decorate my litter tray;
With
colon’s contents duly spent,
I thence depart in great content.-
February 23, 2011 at 12:26 Excellent. We’ll get a few more hooked on the limerick habit as
well…- February 23, 2011 at
19:45 And with kitty-diarrhea – semicolons are used for flow?
February 23, 2011 at 09:44Couldn’t agree more. The worst thing about grammatical errors and the use
of incorrect words is that it destroys the reading flow. You are forever
re-reading sentences in order to deduce what the writer meant to say. As
opposed to spelling errors where your brain just reads past them unscrambling
as it goes.@Timdog – When I wrote technical manuals in Wordstar, before the advent of
the spill chocker, I used to read everything backwards too – it’s a good
method.- February 23, 2011 at
10:08 As the current holder of the Miss Spell 2011 title I can only say that it
is through blogging that I have finally acquired a modicum of
decorum in the spelling department.
Knowing that there are thousands of
you ‘out there’ just waiting for me to misplace an aberrant apostrophe, has
made me pay far more attention to the necessity of following the rules than
I ever used to.
I’m actually grateful for all the corrections, I have
learnt a lot.
Now, would someone like to explain colons and semi-colons
to me?- February 23, 2011 at 11:18
On a technical writing course I attended some years ago, the English
professor running it advised us that as a rule-of-thumb, commas may be
used to break up long sentences in the same way as pauses for breath in
speech. Semicolons are used for flow; they juxtapose two or more sentences
whose ideas are relatively unrelated; colons on the other hand are used to
link sentences and clauses with related or consequential ideas. And the
result: readable English!
Believe me, Anna – your English is delightful
to read!- February 23, 2011 at
16:01 To help ‘envisage’ the flow you can use a semicolon to be where the
word ‘and’ or ‘but’ might be when joining two sentences; the colon –
apart from the admirable use of setting off a list or a statement to end
a sentence by both Pericles and Caedmon’s Cat – can also be used to
replace ‘because’ i.e. “I wear red trousers because I like them” can
become “I wear red trousers: I like them.”- February 23, 2011 at 16:41
Quite right! I hadn’t thought of that..
- February 23, 2011 at 08:54
Pericles – a great post. You’ve highlighted issues that I also feel very
strongly about. The poor standard of grammar and punctuation is ubiquitous –
and not only in the blogosphere: local and national newspapers are also guilty
of language mutilation. Particularly commonplace errors are the use of the
apostrophe (e.g. its/it’s) and basic spelling errors. I realise that one can
become overly pedantic and tedious about the issue, but nevertheless, to my
eyes such errors are a sign of market trader amateurishness – and rightly or
wrongly they can effectively erode the credibility of the writer as well as
what is written.
February
23, 2011 at 08:27Read whatever you wrote backwards, you’ll catch loads of errors because you
remove the context and what your brain is expecting to read. Weirdly it works
for Grammar as well as spelling.I used this in my Spanish and Italian translation courses, is
brilliant.- February
23, 2011 at 09:29 It doesn’t stop one capitalising “Grammar” for absolutely no reason
however! Ah well…-
February 23, 2011 at 19:40 Or, writing ‘…. is brilliant.’ instead of ‘…..it’s brilliant.’
-
February 24, 2011 at 21:15 TheCapitalisation comes from being AProgrammer because for MyLanguage
it is normal to Type VariableNames in CamelCase as it is
known.
e.g.
for MyCounterFromOneToTen := 1 to 10 do…I often put capitals in middle of words
the
other one is a MISTAKE (and I read it BackWards too!)- February 24, 2011 at 21:21
I know.. I know..
Syntax error: missing “the” near “in
middle”
Syntax error; bad punctuation: exclamation mark inside
bracket near “BackWards too”
February 28, 2011 at 16:06i have always thought that case-sensitive os’s or programming
languages like c or php are a bad idea. they lead-to coders typing
everything in lowercase so as to avoid creating problems, which makes
the code harder to read. they cause numerous headaches for publishers,
who create errors if they correct what they see as bad capitalization.
furthermore, since speech is not case-sensitive, they make it
impossible to communicate the code verbally unless it’s laboriously
spelled-out, letter by case-sensitive letter.-and if languages are to be case-sensitive, why not font-sensitive
or italic-sensitive? that would be daft, yes. but so is
case-sensitivity.then again, the use of a full-stop to distinguish between
fully-qualified and relative hostnames must be one of the most
braindead arrangements in it terminology. if the name appears at the
end a sentence how the blazes can you tell if it means ‘www ‘ or
‘www.mydomain.com’ ? (which would actually mean
‘www.mydomain.com.mydomain.com.’ since the concluding . is
missing.)
February 23, 2011 at 08:08I am the worst sinner! I am always making typos because I read what i think
I have written and what is in my head, not what is on the page. having someone
proof read is always invaluable-
February 23, 2011 at 08:09 Erm..see?
{ 57 comments }