Some of you have likely read the blogger TRex’s extraordinarily ugly attack on Liza Sabater this weekend. If not, you aren’t missing much, but if for some reason you haven’t read enough condescending white male attacks on women of color who dare to speak their minds, the post is here.
Kevin Andre Elliott, whose blog you should be reading if you aren’t already, cherry-picked one of the dozen or so faults in the post to demolish, to wit: the grammar cop gambit. TRex’s snark at Sabater included the following:
maybe you should head back to eighth grade English and, you know, learn to spell and to write in a linear fashion
Kevin’s well reasoned reply begins:
[T]he grammar police as argument tactic that is so popular in the blog world is tired and lame. It amazes me that so many people are able and willing to completely dismiss someone’s argument based on a typo. If I discredited every thing I read that contained a grammar or spelling mistake, I wouldn’t be able to interact with anything. Of course the people who make these claims know that’s the case, but it’s so much easier to dismiss someone for superficial reasons than it is to reevaluate one’s actions.
Kevin then goes on to take down the “non-linear” jibe, limning in entertaining detail a number of renowned writers who write non-linearly, at least on occasion, and a few literary traditions where linearity is not particularly prized. You should go read it.
And it got me thinking about grammar. And about linearity in writing, but that post comes later.
Spleling flames are lame. Jokes about misspelling are sometimes funny, especially if the mistake produces a potential pun. Otherwise, a misspelling is either a typo and thus indicative of sloppy editing rather than sloppy writing, or it’s an honest misapprehension with regard to the word’s spelling that is best corrected mildly, or it’s indicative of some sort of organic disorder such as dyslexia. Spelling flames put you at risk of mocking the disabled. Need one say more about that? (Probably, and probably until the end of time. Pity.)
Grammar and usage problems are a bit trickier than spelling problems. Some grammar goofs are innocent, inevitable in informal writing, even to be prized. There are quite a number of types of grammatical errors, and not all of them signify a lack of either education or clear thought. It is my contention, however, that some do signify a lack of either education or clear thought. Let’s run through a few examples of both kinds of errors.
The first one is taken from TRex’s post, linked above.
“Last time I checked, the dashing CT Blogger is, in fact, a black man.”
This disagreement in tense seems clumsy and inexpert. But it may well be an artifact of the author’s editorial process. It’s possible that the original sentence read: “CT Blogger is a black man.” A straightforward, dare we say linear sentence. But then the author decides that the straightforward lacks his trademark attitude, and so he inserts an unnecessary but colloquializing cliché. The sentence now reads: “CT Blogger is, in fact, a black man.” Better! The “in fact” conveys a sort of insouciant head toss, a smirk to underscore the intent to deliver not only the fact of CT Blogger’s race but the equally important fact that the writer knew CT Blogger’s race and you did not.
So far so good. But that’s still pretty subtle. Let’s tack on a deliberate irony! “Last time I checked, the dashing CT Blogger is, in fact, a black man.” The sentence is now sufficiently snarky, insinuating not only that TRex is well-informed enough to know CT Blogger’s race AND that race doesn’t change from week to week, but that the reader is too dim to remember such.
The problem? The sentence is now ungrammatical. “Last time I checked, the dashing CT Blogger is, in fact, a black man.” It’s that pesky little “is,” sitting there while major edits goes on all around it, the author forgetting in his revisions that some such revisions require a recasting of the sentence’s basic structure.
This error sometimes indicates a cluttered mind, and sometimes a mere short deadline. (I make errors of this class rather often, and I blame both causes.) But as it’s often created through an excess of attention to a sentence, over-thinking one’s writing, it’s wrong to assign errors of this class to a lack of basic literacy. It’s more an “attention to detail” issue.
So, Liza, dear, before you go assailing people who are more talented than yourself and making Jane stand in for every blond white woman who ever pissed you off, maybe you should head back to eighth grade English and, you know, learn to spell and to write in a linear fashion.
This one’s from TRex’s post as well. At first glance, you might think the problem is the use of the reflexive pronoun “yourself” where simplicity and clarity would demand a simple objective “you.” But usage experts are split on whether the “-self” form of a pronoun should always be avoided when used in a non-reflexive object role. And there’s a minority usage of the “-self” form as an ironic intensifier, a way of playfully inflating the perceived self-importance of the person the pronoun refers to. Thus TRex gets a pass on this one, as clumsy as the usage may seem.
No, the problem here — well, the grammatical problem — is the unclear antecedent problem. Let’s look at the part of the above phrase that holds the problem: “"before you go assailing people who are more talented than yourself and making Jane stand in for every blond white woman who ever pissed you off…” Given the context, we can assume TRex intended the word “making” as a predicate corresponding to the subject “you.” Liza is making Jane stand in. But the sentence is constructed so that an equally plausible reading outside the context is “before you go assailing people who are… making Jane stand in.”
A knowledge of context does cover a multitude of grammatical sins. But especially in online writing, where Jakob Nielsen’s observations about people skimming content are still valid, the writer cannot always assume the reader has all the context. Unclear antecedents create the possibility of confusion, and sowing confusion in your readers should be avoided, especially in a controversial setting. It’s a shame, really, because the quick fix also makes the whole sentence better:
“So, Liza, dear, before you go assailing people who are more talented than yourself — before you go making Jane stand in for every blond white woman who ever pissed you off — maybe you should head back to eighth grade English and, you know, learn to spell and to write in a linear fashion.” See? The fix [updated shortly after posting when I thought of a better one, which happens] makes the antecedent clear and adds much-needed cadence to an arrhythmic jumble of monosyllables.
Should the writer’s intelligence or literacy be called into doubt on the basis of this awkwardness? Not necessarily. Unclear antecedents are rather common in informal writing, and the boundary between informal online writing and formal online writing has not yet been determined to anyone’s satisfaction. The medium is too new. A skilled writer will try to avoid such constructions, but the Internet is a democratizing tool, and bloggers can now rise to positions of relative prominence without first becoming skilled writers. This is not an entirely positive development, but it should not be held against those writers, like TRex, whose skills are still in development.
“I don’t think it’s too much to ask that someone who wants to be considered A Writer should learn to properly use the language.”
I have to say this is very convenient. I just keep finding great examples of the errors I want to talk about in that same post by TRex. Reading the sentence above, some of you might have noticed that split infinitive right off and assumed that’s what I’d discuss. But no! It’s true that I tend to avoid using split infinitives, but that’s not because they’re ungrammatical. It’s because so many people think they’re ungrammatical, and will notice split infinitives where they occur. When a reader starts thinking about your grammar, she is no longer thinking about your content. But that’s my tendency, and just because I find the use of split infinitives careless and awkward and jarring that doesn’t mean it’s wrong.
Nor am I bothered by the gratuitous Snark Caps. I use them myself.
No, the problem with that sentence is that while it’s not a classic run-on sentence, it reads like one. It’s a series of nested subject-predicate sets that convey just one idea: “A Writer should use language properly.” Stick in the verb “to learn,” and the meaning changes slightly, clarifying the writer’s intent, which is all to the good. “A Writer should learn to use language properly.” That adds a note of fairness, an implication that even an accomplished writer might have something to learn. And the “wants to be considered” amplifies that nicely. “Someone who wants to be considered A Writer should learn to use language properly.” But in the original — “I don’t think it’s too much to ask that someone who wants to be considered A Writer should learn to properly use the language” — just look at all the actions the reader is being asked to imagine. Thinking, asking, wanting, considering, learning, using, and that’s not even taking into account the implied verbs in “Writer” or “should.”
Writing in a conversational tone is fine: done well, it aids comprehension. But tacking colloquial clauses onto a simple sentence slows comprehension, like layers of barnacles on the hull will slow a ship. This is a grammatical error that can, justifiably, call a person’s clarity of thought into question, suggesting a buzzing hive of unrelated activities in the writer’s mind.
It seems she is forever bitching that Atrios, Kos, et al [sic] never link to her and she hangs the blame for this on the fact that she’s a woman.
Another TRex sentence. This one neatly illustrates the issue of word choice and how it sometimes shows whether the author’s thought process is well-organized. The problem word here is “blame.” It’s clear that what the writer intends to say is that Liza blames the alleged sexism of the big-league bloggers for their refusal to link to her. But as cast, it sounds like TRex is saying that Liza blames her exclusion on her gender. This would not be an inherently implausible situation outside the current context, but in the current context it’s exactly the kind of alternate interpretation that could spread discord in unintended ways. Judgment: carelessness on the part of the writer. A damning error? Not necessarily, though the number of other errors in the work may influence the editor’s judgment.
“Of course, silly me, I took the trouble to ask what the deal was before jumping to conclusions and assuming the worst.”
You may have guessed the provenance of this sentence. Diagnosis: cliché. Despite the pejorative feeling to the word, good writing often relies on cliché. A cliché can convey complex information in an economical package. However, I tend to keep my cliché use to two per sentence or less when possible. I do not claim diligence or perfection on my part, as I often publish dashed-off prose without re-reading it, and I’m sure that a few triticism-packed sentences have found their way onto this blog. But let’s tally the clichés in that sentence, including the obvious references to modified clichés:
of course
silly me
took the trouble
what’s the deal
jump to conclusions
assume the worst
Counting words, this means that nearly four fifths of the sentence is composed of cliché. I’ve been an editor for two decades now, and that much cliché almost always indicates that the writer’s brain is temporarily out of service. It’s automatic pilot writing. And a stroll through the whole post shows that while this is likely the most cliché-packed sentence, the difference between it and the rest of the post is merely a matter of degree. This is writing without doing any of the hard work, a usage problem that would prompt this editor, were I to read this as a submission, to return to sender.
And so I’m afraid I disagree with Kevin, at least mildly, on the matter of the grammar police. True, there are grammatical and usage mistakes that are forgivable, even acceptable. Sometimes skilled writers deliberately break the rules. In fact, I’d even agree that the rules are mainly there for unskilled writers, that the rules take the place of skill for writers who have not yet mastered their craft.
But some violations of grammar and usage rules actually indicate sloppy thinking, and sloppy thinking is a perfectly valid reason to dismiss a person’s writing as not worth one’s valuable reading time. Especially since there’s so much good writing out in the world these days, some of it with typos.
