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Grammar - does it matter?
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We have had a best-selling book about punctuation, do we need one about grammar? I have heard the following on the tv recently - ' he is coming to cut Richard and I's hair', ' they never gave you and I a chance', and ' a prisoner has hung himself'. Does it matter that a sentence or phrase is not strictly grammatically correct, if the correct sense is being conveyed?
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Shortly after Lynne Truss's successful book about punctuation was published recently, Rod Liddle wrote quite a lengthy article in 'The Times' in which he used capital letters to open sentences and full stops to end them. Not another single punctuation mark did he employ.
His point, of course, was to ask whether we really needed any of them. Questions are generally made clear by word-order, exclamations are obvious from context and so forth. Is the phrase "the mans car" any less clear than "the man's car"?
Please don't misunderstand...I am not advocating our adoption of Liddle's suggestions, as you can presumably see from my response thus far, which is punctuated to heck and back! However, I think we have to be aware that grammatical changes, too, will come whether we like them or not. Text-messaging - or rather txt-mssgng - style is already becoming common in other areas of writing. Language is a living 'organism' and it just will adapt willy-nilly as people vary their use of it. Personally, I love all the rules of punctuation and grammar as they are right now and believe it does matter that we try to retain them if only as a bulwark for as long as we can against the worst barbarities.
Yes it does matter! Why do standards have to slip just because people become lazy and can't bothered to use apostrophes and the like? The joke about the panda that "eats shoots and leaves" (also the title of Truss's book) demonstrates brilliantly how the (lack of) use of grammar can change the entire meaning of a sentence. Oh dear, I sound like an old fuddy duddy. Think I will now go and answer the Q in Body & Soul about feeling old.
The thing is, though, Miss Z, that - if in the midst of reading something about pandas - who in his/her right mind would imagine that the words 'shoots' and 'leaves' were verbs? Nobody...yet that is precisely the "joke" Ms Truss pretends to imagine we'll swallow. Rod Liddle was perfectly right to point out that the joke was nonsense.
I see that point QM, but that just goes to illustrate the multiple meanings a single sentence can have and how grammar and the correct use of punctuation can clarify meaning. Just because we're capable of deciphering the meaning of a poorly written piece of text shouldn't mean that spelling, punctuation and grammar become superfluous.
I totally agree, Miss Z, as I hope my earlier response made clear. I just wanted to stress the fact that we rule-upholders are, in the end, fighting a losing battle.
Think of the hoo-haa we make nowadays when someone mistakenly uses "it's" when he/she means "its" or vice versa. The fact is, though, that "its", without the apostrophe, does not appear anywhere in Shakespeare's works published in his own lifetime, for example. However, "it's" - with an apostrophe and meaning 'belonging to it' - does appear there!
The passage of time makes nonsense of the 'rules' applied in any given age and time will do exactly the same to our 'rules', too. That was the simple point of my reply. Cheers
It occurs to me that there are illustrations of rule-changes which have occurred in my own lifetime, never mind since Shakespeare's day. As a schoolboy - a long, long time ago - I had to write 'to-morrow' with a hyphen. Unheard of today. Now, especially in the USA - and so inevitably here eventually - hyphens are being thrown away wholesale, even when they are actually helpful. When you first see 'seaurchins', you suspect it might be an unfamiliar French word pronounced roughly as 'sore-shang'. Only after a double-take (with a hyphen) do you realise they are referring to 'sea-urchins'! Similarly, when they write 'coopt', you might think it's Dutch or Afrikaans, but it's actually 'co-opt'. My favourite is the fact that they do not have colleagues over there, but 'coworkers'. Could these conceivably be people who 'ork' cows?
It so happens that I got a magazine today, and bundled with it was a card advertising some "potted history" cards. The flyer was about Henry VIII.
I quote: "Suspicious and vindictive, Henry's many victims included ..." It doesn't say why his victims were suspicious. Had they simply omitted the comma it would have made sense.
Yes, grammar definitely matters. If nothing else it is a courtesy to the reader, making the writing clear, unambiguous and a pleasure to read.
I quote: "Suspicious and vindictive, Henry's many victims included ..." It doesn't say why his victims were suspicious. Had they simply omitted the comma it would have made sense.
Yes, grammar definitely matters. If nothing else it is a courtesy to the reader, making the writing clear, unambiguous and a pleasure to read.
A zillion years ago when I was at school we were given the following sentance which made no sense without the correct punctuation......'Time flies you cannot they go too fast', only when insert the correct bits do you get...'Time flies? You cannot, they go too fast!', a totally useless bit of info but it proves the point. PS: We were also taught that the use of more than one exclamation mark was gramatically incorrect and common!!!!!
Well my toes turned up when I heard the examples in the question, but I wondered was I the only one, and should I be worrying about such things - it seems that I am not alone, and I am pleased that so many people have an opinion. It is difficult, because we want to teach children to express themselves freely, and some would be intimidated by strictly imposed grammar. However, we need a balance because (as mentioned by apricot) without grammar and punctuation the whole logic of a sentence can be lost. Cheers folks.
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