The Chronicle of Higher Education published recently what some might consider a screed against Strunk and White’s The Elements of Style — or Strunk and White as it is often referred — in honour of the semicentennial of the original 1959 release. I’m a great lover of English, and Strunk and White was incredibly influential in codifying my initial sense of good taste when writing, so I had to see what could be so bad about it.

One of the “rules” of Strunk and White the author of this article, Geoffrey K Pullum, notes chidingly is “write with nouns and verbs, not adjectives and adverbs,” except it’s not a rule; it’s what the book calls an approach.

The book is separated to five segments: Elementary Rules of Usage, Elementary Principles of Composition, A Few Matters of Form, Words and Expressions Commonly Misused, and An Approach to Style. That last section has some questionable advice, some which I consider outdated and therefore ignore, or rather I put less weight on them when I make my decisions.

On the other hand, I, to this day, agree with all the Rules of Usage and following them does indeed generate more pleasing sentences. In the rare cases when those rules can be broken, they should be broken knowingly and by someone well versed in their proper usage. For example, splitting up a sentence into briefer, less grammatically correct, sentences can affect the reading of a line of a novel, giving greater urgency to the words. Overall, those elementary rules are truly elemental to good writing. Pullum criticises little of this section, and I’ll save my response to that for later in the post.

Following the Rules of Usage, there are the Elementary Principles of Composition. The one rule in this section Pullum derides in particular is “use the active voice.”

We are told that the active clause “I will always remember my first trip to Boston” sounds much better than the corresponding passive “My first visit to Boston will always be remembered by me.” It sure does. But that’s because a passive is always a stylistic train wreck when the subject refers to something newer and less established in the discourse than the agent (the noun phrase that follows “by”).

For me to report that I paid my bill by saying “The bill was paid by me,” with no stress on “me,” would sound inane. (I’m the utterer, and the utterer always counts as familiar and well established in the discourse.) But that is no argument against passives generally. “The bill was paid by an anonymous benefactor” sounds perfectly natural. Strunk and White are denigrating the passive by presenting an invented example of it deliberately designed to sound inept.

Pullum failed to notice the subsequent paragraph which discusses that very point:

If the writer tries to make it more concise by omitting “by me,”

My first visit will always be remembered,

it becomes indefinite: is it the writer or some undisclosed person or the world at large that will always remember this visit?

Which is absolutely correct. And completely unaccounted for by Pullum. He then criticises the book for three of its four example passive sentences in its “Passive vs Active” sentence pairs not actually being passive sentences. At least not grammatically speaking. Of course, that’s not really what that section is about. What is specifically stated at the start of the section is “the active voice is usually much more direct and vigorous than the passive.” While some loose grammatical terminology is discussed, the crux of the argument centred on the passivity of the sentence. And no one can deny that “there were a great number of dead leaves lying on the ground” is considerably more passive than “dead leaves covered the ground.” It was the indirect way in which these sentences got their point across that chafed Strunk and White. Perhaps they could’ve done better in their description of the difference between their examples, but the advice is no less valid; nitpicking the difference between grammatical passivity and semantic passivity seems childish.

Immediately following this minutiae-obsessed drone about passive voice comes an attack of another rule of composition: put statements in the positive form. The critique of this is once again a case of nitpicking. Because Strunk and White wrote the sentence “the adjective hasn’t been built that can pull a weak or inaccurate noun out of a tight place,” which includes a dreaded negation, Pullum calls them out as hypocrites and purveyors of inaccurate advice. Naturally, while doing so, he completely ignores the actual content of the section.

Make definite assertions. Avoid tame, colorless, hesitating, noncommittal language. Use the word not as a means of denial or in antithesis, not as a means of evasion.

So, because Strunk and White wrote a sentence which definitively asserted that adjectives cannot replace well chosen nouns — that is, as a means of denial — they are hypocrites.

And when Pullum isn’t misrepresenting Strunk and White’s advice, he cherry-picks from the collected vocabulary of English to refute their supposed arguments.

For example, Chapter IV, in an unnecessary piece of bossiness, says that the split infinitive “should be avoided unless the writer wishes to place unusual stress on the adverb.” The bossiness is unnecessary because the split infinitive has always been grammatical and does not need to be avoided. (The authors actually knew that. Strunk’s original version never even mentioned split infinitives. White added both the above remark and the further reference, in Chapter V, admitting that “some infinitives seem to improve on being split.”) But what interests me here is the descriptive claim about stress on the adverb. It is completely wrong.

Tucking the adverb in before the verb actually de-emphasizes the adverb, so a sentence like “The dean’s statements tend to completely polarize the faculty” places the stress on polarizing the faculty. The way to stress the completeness of the polarization would be to write, “The dean’s statements tend to polarize the faculty completely.”

I am an avid supporter of the split infinitive, primarily because the arguments against it are rooted in the limitations of English’s progenitors. And “to polarize completely” does place more emphasis on the completeness of the polarization than “to completely polarize.” But the example which Strunk and White use — “to diligently inquire” versus “to inquire diligently” — is the exact opposite. (And really, is it placing more emphasis on the boldness of it to say “to go boldy” than “to boldly go?”) Strunk and White note the difficulty of split infinitives later on when they write that “some infinitives seem to improve on being split,” and describe the decision the author must take as “a matter of ear.”

Beyond these childish criticisms, none of which carry any real persuasive power, though, is the deeper problem: Pullum is a linguist, and an idiotic one. Following these “scathing” criticisms, he moves on to a different tact: the appeal to popularity.

An entirely separate kind of grammatical inaccuracy in Elements is the mismatch with readily available evidence. Simple experiments (which students could perform for themselves using downloaded classic texts from sources like http://gutenberg.org) show that Strunk and White preferred to base their grammar claims on intuition and prejudice rather than established literary usage.

Consider the explicit instruction: “With none, use the singular verb when the word means ‘no one’ or ‘not one.’” Is this a rule to be trusted? Let’s investigate.

• Try searching the script of Oscar Wilde’s The Importance of Being Earnest (1895) for “none of us.” There is one example of it as a subject: “None of us are perfect” (spoken by the learned Dr. Chasuble). It has plural agreement.
• Download and search Bram Stoker’s Dracula (1897). It contains no cases of “none of us” with singular-inflected verbs, but one that takes the plural (“I think that none of us were surprised when we were asked to see Mrs. Harker a little before the time of sunset”).
• Examine the text of Lucy Maud Montgomery’s popular novel Anne of Avonlea (1909). There are no singular examples, but one with the plural (“None of us ever do”).

It seems to me that the stipulation in Elements is totally at variance not just with modern conversational English but also with literary usage back when Strunk was teaching and White was a boy.

The naïvete here is a little baffling, to be honest. How a linguist can claim a style guide published in 1959 should not only mirror the style of how text was written fifty years hence but also remain completely valid fifty years later is beyond me. Language is constantly changing. Maybe it was considered archaic to write in the manner of Oscar Wilde or Bram Stoker in the wake of the scores of literature-changing novels that emerged in the intervening fifty years. We don’t suggest using the term “help meet” to refer to women anymore, either.

Despite this utter lack of understanding of how languages change — from a linguist, no less — Strunk and White once again have preempted this false criticism:

A plural verb is commonly used when none suggests more than one person or thing.

None are so fallible as those who are sure they’re right.

And yes, the appeal to popularity should carry some weight when writing a book like The Elements of Style, but I’m sure that there are just as many examples of “none of you is perfect” that Pullum either ignored because they weren’t written by authors as famous as Stoker and Wilde or simply to prove his point.

But, for the moment, let’s ignore the appeals to popularity, and the straw men arguments he attempts to construct, and the cherry-picked sentences; there’s one sentence that, in my opinion, discredits any analysis Pullum may proffer.

There are many other cases of Strunk and White’s being in conflict with readily verifiable facts about English.

The Elements of Style is not a formal description of the language and its syntax. It is not there to describe what is possible in English. It describes one way to write well, not what can be written.

Many sentences can be written which meet the grammar of English and make no sense at all. Even further, only a limited subset of the infinite permutations of possible sentences that can be written will read well.

To talk of the “facts about English” in this way, when the subject matter is explicitly discussing the style of English, is absurd. It borders on dishonesty. It’s true that some of Strunk and White’s advice isn’t universal, but to claim that they considered it such is farcical. Strunk and White offer up intelligent guidelines while admitting that “the shape of our language is not rigid; in questions of usage we have no lawgiver whose word is final.” Pullum seems content to throw the baby out with the bathwater, choosing to ignore all of Strunk and White’s inestimable advice because of a few outliers in our complex and beautiful language.

There’s been a bit of talk about Tom Cruise’s new movie Valkyrie and how Tom Cruise speaks without a German accent despite playing a German character. I don’t understand that really. Having your characters speak in outrageous accents didn’t make a lot of sense to me. Why exactly is it offensive to have a Chinese character say “Me so solly” and yet it’s expected for a German character to speak like “Zis und Zat”? Aren’t those really the same thing?

I’d understand those sorts of accent in a film which is based on English speaking events, but the events of Valkyrie all took place in the real world in German. The fact that those events have been transcribed to English means that the audience should simply accept that some invisible translation has occurred for their sake. (Also, I know that many Americans during World War 2 spoke German fluently as a disguise, why couldn’t Germans have done the same thing?)

A couple reviews I’ve read — mostly through blogs, traditional media wouldn’t dare be so glib about a WW2 movie — essentially cast aside the movie because of the “unauthentic” accents. The people the film is based on spoke perfect and unaccented German. It was their native tongue. So it makes sense to me that any retelling of this story in the English speaking world would either be entirely in German (unfeasible for commercial reasons) or use English as the primary language and treat the characters as if it was their native tongue (what seems to have been done). Then again, I haven’t seen the movie so I should probably just shut my mouth until I can decide how distracting the American accent is.

Christian Rock sucks. It does. You shouldn’t try to defend it, you should be more worried about why you listen to such shitty music¹.

It’s shitty half of the time because it’s cloying and cliche and the other half of the time because it’s deceitful. The first half is the stuff you see in one minute mini-infomercials late at night. The second half is the stuff that makes it out of the core Christian Rock culture and into mainstream rock.

Switchfoot. POD. Seventh Day Slumber. This Beautiful Republic. Christian Rock bands generally have really lame names. And if you run across the music of any of the bands that “pass” as regular rock, you’d probably like it enough to listen but not enough to love it. It becomes a part of the din of songs that get played on your local rock radio station. But, for me at least, when you find out they are a Christian Rock band, suddenly every time their songs come on you can hear nothing beyond their hidden evangelizing.

It’s not that I dislike that they infuse their music with their religious beliefs; the best music comes from your most strongly felt emotions. But those bands go about it in a deceitful way. When interviewed they claim they’re not “Christian Rock” even when they began their career in the highly accessible Christian Rock tours that can really raise the profile of up and coming bands. I understand that the label of “Christian Rock” has a dirty connotation to it, but it has that because of bands like those that deny the meanings behind their songs. Rather than admit that they’re praising God, they pretend the song is about a girl.

The less notable segment of Christian Rock isn’t much better. With their over-the-top references to Jesus and God, they go beyond simply expressing their feelings and thoughts and head into the world of evangelizing. And when your songs are little more than evangelical chants wrapped in rhythm, you not only lock yourself into the Christian base, a base which doesn’t need evangelizing in the first place, but you reduce your credibility as an artist.

I’m an atheist but that doesn’t mean I detest religion; I simply have no need or desire for it in my personal life. But many of my favourite shows and movies have religious and mystical concepts at their very heart. So don’t think I hate Christian Rock simply because it involves God. I hate it because it involves God poorly.

An example of a band which is not Christian Rock but has lyrics which discuss God and Jesus very openly (and earnestly) is Page France. I’ve listened to most of Page France’s “Hello, Dear Wind” and overall the album’s a little weak, but the tracks that I find myself returning to since the initial listen — the opening two tracks (Chariot, and Jesus) and the closing track (Feather) — all contain various levels of religious and Christian symbols. But the key is that those songs talk about Jesus and God in novel ways, and they appear to be not an active part of their music. Their songs don’t include God because they think their songs should include God, but merely because the songs they end up writing include him.

I said Christian Rock sucks, but the truth is that Christian Rock shouldn’t even exist. Like the “Pro-American” parts of America Sarah Palin talks about, Rock music isn’t something to be chopped up and spread among ideologies. Music which contains religious references isn’t Religious Music. Categorizing music is fine, in fact I Love it, but there’s a difference between an adjective and a noun. A noun is what you are, but an adjective is simply a modifier. Much like the difference between calling a gay person “a gay” and “a gay person” it seem nominal at best, but the difference is staggering in its connotations. And far too many people don’t treat “Christian Rock” as an adjective followed by a noun.

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Footnotes

1. With apologies to Daniel Tosh [↩]

Through a random Wikipedia journey I came across the Wikipedia page for Raul Castro. I came across a section where they quoted from one of his speeches talking about him taking over for Fidel Castro: “Fidel is irreplaceable, unless we all replace him together.”

That line is more than just a cute sound bite, but also a fascinating socio-anthropological cue. It emphasizes the communal aspect of a communist government (well, the ideal one anyways) which is not something seen in most American speeches. It made me suddenly realize that great speeches do not necessarily use the same vocabulary. There might have been a time and place where the words of Kennedy wouldn’t have inspired the masses. A whole new vocabulary of persuasion has to be invented based on what the people of your country want.

This semi-revelation also opened my eyes a little about the current presidential race: Barack Obama’s speeches bring hope and inspiration to millions, but there are many out there who wouldn’t be inspired if only because he’s using the wrong words, or he’s accentuating the wrong things. Obama is obviously aware of the power of targeted language since he often injects phrases evangelicals would recognize when he speaks of his religion.

But it goes beyond that. Using certain words to affect is a subset of this larger idea. This is more than selecting the right words, it’s about selecting the right concepts and the right words. This may have seemed to obvious to many, and indeed it’s obvious to me now, but that doesn’t dull the impact it had on me. The depth of effort a speech-writer must go through to perfect the image of the speech-giver was so much more abstract until I read that understated phrase.

I’m not a fan of prescriptive linguistics. English is defined descriptively, not prescriptively. That is, English does not have a formal definition from which the language is constructed; the language is described by its usage. I’m misusing the terms prescriptive and descriptive linguistics a little here, but the essence is the same. Languages like French and Latin are predefined so they can be better studied using prescriptive linguistics. English changes all the time so the arguments for prescriptive linguistics don’t hold water.

Of course, prescriptive linguists don’t want English to change at all. They want it to be a dead language. Case in point: what’s the French word for internet? Internet. It’s not even a French word; it must be awkwardly placed into otherwise francophonic speech. And why? Because there is an organization that dictates what goes into the language. The language’s rules are prescribed like the speakers of the language are obviously too idiotic to speak the language.

This kind of stance will inevitably bite me in the ass because descriptive linguistics, where common usage is described and codified as the proper usage, means languages can change. And there are certain things I like about English. I like not ending sentences with prepositions; I might do it from time to time, but I get a perverse little kick out of reordering the words of a subordinate clause such that the preposition leads rather than lingers. Of course, it’s not like the language will ever outlaw that type of speech – English is described not prescribed, after all – it will merely be deemed archaic. I don’t appreciate being referred to as archaic but it wouldn’t be the end of the world. Similarly, I tend not to brazenly split infinitives but I absolutely disagree that they shouldn’t be allowed. As others have said, the idea that we shouldn’t split infinitives comes from other parent languages which don’t allow it; of course, they don’t allow it because it can’t be done in those languages, but that point is typically ignored. That said, I would never want to live in a country where “irregardless” is seen as a real word; not only is there already a perfectly good word with the same meaning (regardless) but “irregardless” implies negation of regardless by its prefix. On the other hand, while normalcy is a neologism for normality, I accept normalcy because it has a poetic feel to it that normality cannot evoke.

But I don’t care if my stance on English is slightly hypocritical because, quite frankly, so is English itself. And I Love English. There’s no language I’d rather have gown up speaking. It’s weird, it has no strong rules of grammar, and it’s essentially learned through trial and error but it’s ultimately the result of five hundred years of brilliant minds borrowing from other languages to better evoke the feelings and descriptions they had. English is not a romance language. It has borrowed most of its vocabulary from romance languages but it is very different and should not be bogged down in the bureaucratic quagmire that is prescriptive linguistics. Languages are not created by the elite few, they are shaped by society. On occasion, it seems like society shouldn’t really be in charge of those things – especially given the preponderance of internet speak leaking into the vernacular – but most of the time I’m damn proud that our language isn’t locked away. Because if it were, a new Shakespeare could be born and we’d never appreciate the beauty of the words they bring.

Next gen gaming is hip. Until it’s the current generation. Generations are simply iterative development. The next generation of humans is the people who are alive after their parents are dead. The next generation of games is the gaming systems that are used after the current system of games. (Really, all this “next gen” talk is a bunch of nonsense by now because the next generation to which everyone refers is now.)

Will Wright recently made the claim that the Wii is the only next gen console which, beyond being an inflammatory statement, is false. The PS3 and Xbox 360 are next gen systems because they are the next generation of systems. A new generation does not imply a startling shift in how games are played. Did games really drastically change from N64 to Gamecube or from PS1 to PS2? Of course not, they go prettier but the games were essentially the same. If the Wii is the only next gen console then the definition of “current gen” has to define the Commodore 63 as equal as the PS2.

Beyond this idiotic rebranding of what a generation means in relation to games, there’s the even more idiotic need of this world to be buzzword compliant. Though rendering speed and resolutions can satiate computer and video game geeks, the layperson needs simple direct statements implying that something is better than the other (at least according to marketing douches). Ajax is just one of the buzzwords one must throw around to seem like they are aware of the current internet culture. Web 2.0 is another one though, unlike Ajax, it has no specific meaning.

But unlike Ajax or Web 2.0, generation is a real term that has been stolen and twisted until its true meaning is rendered archaic. I’ve ranted about fanboyism before so these kinds of idiotic statements are obviously distasteful to me, but that’s not why I wanted to write this. As much as I love to slap fanboys down for being more resolute than Franciscan monks in their views, the reason I wrote this is because the world needs “generation.” This is not impeding the growth and development of the language. This is not the actions of a greater mass slowly shifting the perception of a word, this is a marketing ploy that has managed to ingrain itself into gaming culture.

Amazingly, every time you need to say someone is close-minded or narrow-minded you don’t need to use the word myopic. Just because it’s an elitist word not found in most people’s vocabularies doesn’t mean you need to use it. I could say badinage instead of banter every single time or I could use a more varied approach to my commentaries. I personally prefer to use as many different words as possible especially when I notice myself reusing words because they are as Peter Griffin might say small complicated words.

I find it especially annoying because it seems that most use the term to mean the narrow/close-minded form for which there are many other words which more accurately define your intended insult. Myopic comes from the medical term for near-sightedness so originally the term was intended to evoke the idea that in your decisions you lack the foresight to understand the further consequences of your actions and choices. Now, I’m all for the expanding meaning of words as the english language evolves, that’s one of the things I love about our language; but if you’re trying to insult someone because they’re prejudiced say they’re prejudiced don’t just call them myopic because it makes you feel smarter.