Celene, love the notion of academic link bait… just love it.

Dan, actually I’ve edited both magazines and newspapers and you’re absolutely right – the mistakes are sometimes horrendous – and look,

here’s Isaac, trying to teach college freshmen and women… not easy.

Ed, true also of Jazz and Blues although I doubt the early Blues musicians knew the rules they were breaking – they just knew how to express what they were feeling in wonderful music.

J, great observation… yep, just like that.

Melissa, oh dear. I guess I’m much more of a blues writer than a classical because I wouldn’t recognize which sentences in the book were called passive without being such.

Benjamin! I’m blushing… also fixed it. One of the problems with blogging is there’s no time for editing. Blogging is to formal writing like the blues are to Bach. I don’t know that I find the mistakes pointed out difficult to accept as mistakes so much as I don’t think they are important. It’s nitpicking to me. If the rewriters of the manuals or the beginning college students or the comic book writers followed the book writing would be much more readable. Readability… that’s what I really want.

Norm, haven’t had anyone use either jeremiad or gobsmacked on this blot yet – great words. Thanks. Don’t know any piece of writing where there aren’t mistakes.

Norm Benson’s last blog post..Perhaps some other laws have been ignored too?

The approach I took when reading the article was that I am not a linguist, and the gentleman who wrote the article is head of a linguistic department. He has probably forgotten more about grammar than I will ever be able to learn in my lifetime. Note that he never criticizes the writing of Strunk and White, but merely pans their inconsistent and on occasion incorrect grammatical advice, in each instance backing up his critique with examples.

In Canada, we weren’t really taught out of this book in school, so I don’t have any particular attachment to it. My girlfriend, who is American, reacted in much the same way you did to the article, however.

Given the fact that there are so many science guides and manuals from the past that bear re-working as new discoveries are made, it doesn’t surprise me that a grammar manual that is so old would contain as a many errors and omissions as this one purportedly does. I do find it interesting that the examples pointed out as mistakes by this man, who essentially has a doctorate in grammar, are so difficult for everyone to accept as mistakes.

Someone brought up classical music. I am a classically trained pianist, and in that world each teacher has their own style and ‘interpretation’ of how music should be played, including different pieces. It would seem as though Strunk and White have managed to spread their own personal preferences when it comes to grammar over a wide cohort of writers, and when this is challenged people defend it based on the fact that it is familiar. If you have always played a piece a certain way, or heard the same recording of a certain song your entire life, then the revelation that there are different and perhaps more accurate interpretations will make you uncomfortable.

Benjamin Hunting’s last blog post..My Miata Track Car

Melissa’s last blog post..Cricket!

Ed’s last blog post..Chicago Sun-Times Files For Chapter 11

Isaac’s last blog post..Grammar is Power

I’ve always loved The Elements of Style, ever since my first journalism teacher made us purchase it. I still have that book, something that I can’t really say about most of my other college textbooks.

I think grammar, sadly, is becoming a lost art even among writers. There’s a forum I visit often for writers who aspire to write for the comic-book industry. You’d be amazed at the script samples that people post there. Commas, especially, seem to suffer.

Dan’s last blog post..Content Writing Madness is moving to a new home

Celine’s last blog post..Content Inbreeding: Why We Should Make New Connections