Writing Rules Made to Be Broken?
Admission time: I'm reluctant to change. And that reluctance extends into all areas of life, but in particular anything literary related. Except for a few rare exceptions, I don't (yet--never say never) do audio- or e-books, and beyond LOL, I abhor textspeak. I cringed last fall when I saw a huge sign in Burger King that read "Have It UR Way," or something like that. It was almost as bad as the commercials that turned Colonel Sanders into a rapping cartoon character ... almost.
So, it was with great surprise upon reading Un-rules that I find most of these grammatical "rule breakers" perfectly fine. There are a few I still flag when I edit and insist upon when I write formally, but many of them I let slide by and regularly break myself. Which ones are or are not acceptable to you?
Labels: discussions, editing, news
posted by Irreverent Freelancer @ 9:08 AM
8 comments
8 Comments:
I remember my second grade teacher telling me that "till" was wrong. Glad to say that my 6-year-old self actually had it right after all. ;o) I actually agree with almost all of these -- the only thing that irritates me is giving a pass to the spelling errors. I know the difference between a spelling error and a grammar error, thank you, but I don't like either!
The then/than mixup drives my toenails into my heels. I can't take it! It will never be acceptable to me - never, I say! :)
Because we're used to saying "you only live once" I'm okay with it.
I get homicidal when someone says "texting" or "Facebooking" - they're not verbs! But my husband told me as he hid behind something that English is a morphing language and we should be open to the changes. I'm still pondering that.
I agree, Lori. The then/than confusion will never be acceptable, but I'm okay with using text and Facebook as verbs. I guess that's because there are no verbs for them that get the job done just right.
Commercials and ads are notorious for breaking rules this way. I remember a commercial for strawberries, in which the announcer said (and I quote) that if you didn't act now, you'd have to wait "a whole 'nuther year." My sister (the budding copyeditor at the tender age of 13) caught the error and pointed it out to me. I still remember it every time I break that rule, too. :)
Strangely, it's all a question of ideology in the end. There's a never-ending usage war going on. You either tend to be someone who tends to lean toward a fixed set of rules or someone who tends to think that usage has the final say. The truth, as usual, lies somewhere in the middle.
EP
http://www.englishproco.com/
I still find myself trying to cut out as many “nots” from verbs as possible. And trying not begin sentences with conjunctions. And trying not to end sentences with prepositions like “of.” What's been the biggest help—strangely enough—is writing advertisements. Marketing language is tuned in with the latest evolutions of language, and grammatically correct headlines and body copy often don't grab people's attention. When I bring what I've learned to creative nonfiction, I have more freedom to listen to the cadences, idioms, and local color of how we speak, rather than those sometimes stiff conventions of how I learned to write.
I really enjoyed reading this article - thank you for posting the link to it, Kathy! I too find that I'm more inclined to be flexible about verbing nouns than I am about then/than, apostrophe use (shudder), and spelling errors.
I believe, however, that I have in fact found a situation in which the placement of the word "ONLY" did make a difference! :) Our house backs onto a park; in the park is a city-run tennis court. On the fence beside the court, a sign was posted, saying, "TENNIS ONLY ON COURT SURFACE."
The problem arose when some local boys decided that this meant they could use the court for playing street hockey, since the sign *obviously* meant simply that people were not allowed to play tennis anywhere except the tennis court... And then one day they were chased off by by-law officers, who put up a new sign reading, "THIS COURT IS FOR TENNIS ONLY." Loophole closed...
Thanks for stopping by, StriderGirl! When I talk, I'm lax about the placement of only. When I write and edit, I'm more precise ... except when the writing is very informal and it sounds too high-falutin' to be correct. Those boys definitely had a case to be made. The way that sign was worded did convey what they inferred as *obvious*.
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