Grammar police, unite!

[AdamSmith]

Ehem.

 

Latin-obsessed 17th century introverts…

Some of these groundless rules (termed ‘fetishes’ by Henry Fowler in 1926) have a long history. Back in the 17th and 18th centuries, some notable writers (aka Latin-obsessed 17th century introverts) tried to make English grammar conform to that of Latin – hence the veto on split infinitives as well as the current preposition confusion.

 

The word ‘preposition’ ultimately derives from Latin prae ‘before’ and ponere ’to place’. In Latin grammar, the rule is that a preposition should always precede the prepositional object that it is linked with: it is never placed after it. According to a number of other authorities, it was the dramatist John Dryden in 1672 who was the first person to criticize a piece of English writing (by Ben Jonson) for placing a preposition at the end of a clause instead of before the noun or pronoun to which it was linked.

 

This prohibition was taken up by grammarians and teachers in the next two centuries and became very tenacious. English is not Latin, however, and contemporary authorities do not try to shoehorn it into the Latin model. Nevertheless, many people are still taught that ending a sentence or clause with a preposition should be avoided.

 

This is the sort of English up with which I will not put!

Although Ben Zimmer seems to have laid to rest the myth that the above witticism can be attributed to Winston Churchill, the quote illustrates that trying to avoid a stranded preposition could lead you to get your linguistic knickers in a terrible twist.

 

In fact, there are four main types of situation in which it is more natural to end a sentence or clause with a preposition:

• passive structures (she enjoys being fussed over)
  
• relative clauses (they must be convinced of the commitment that they are taking on)
  
• infinitive structures (Tom had no-one to play with)
  
• questions beginning with who, where, what, etc. (what music are you interested in?)
  

Most attempts to avoid stranding or deferring prepositions in the following examples end up sounding over-formal, awkward, or like Yoda in Star Wars:

 

Stranded preposition | Preposition before noun or pronoun

Gail has much to be happy about. | Gail has much about which to be happy. [over-formal]

Martin persuaded Lucy that there was nothing to be frightened of. | Martin persuaded Lucy that there was nothing of which to be frightened. [over-formal]

The house hadn’t been paid for, so they had to sell it. | Paid for the house had not been, so they had to sell it. [not good English]

Who were you talking to? | To whom were you talking? [over-formal]

The tennis match was rained off. | Rained off the tennis match was. [not good English]

He wondered where she had come from. | He wondered from where she had come. [over-formal]

She often said things that were inappropriate, but think of the pressure she was under. | She often said things that were inappropriate, but she was under a great deal of pressure. [less emphatic]

 

To sum up, the deferring of prepositions sounds perfectly natural and is part of standard English. Once you start moving the prepositions to their supposed ‘correct’ positions you find yourself with very stilted or even impossible sentences. Well-established and famous writers over the years, such as George Orwell, Anthony Burgess, and Julian Barnes, have been blithely stranding their prepositions to no ill effect: please feel free to go and end a sentence with a preposition!

 

http://blog.oxforddictionaries.com/2011/11/grammar-myths-prepositions/

[AdamSmith]

"Latin-obsessed 17th-century introverts"

 

Some Language Log readers have long suspected me of secret prescriptivist sympathies, and I'm about to add fuel to the fire by standing up for John Dryden. Sort of.

 

It all starts with today's SMBC. A student asks "Can I end my sentence with a preposition?", and the teacher responds "Good question! Let's see what a group of Latin-obsessed 17th century introverts decided!" The introverts' cartooned answer:

 

http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/myl/SMBCprep1.png

 

 

And they add, in the aftercomic:

 

http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/myl/SMBCprepAfter.gif

 

Now, there's no question that the whole business about final prepositions involves layers on layers of foolishness. And there's no question that John Dryden set the foolishness in motion in 1672 (see "Hot Dryden-on-Jonson action", 5/1/2007), a date that certainly falls within the 17th century. And it's fair to call Dryden "Latin-obsessed" — all educated Europeans were steeped in Latin grammar in those days, and Dryden in particular made his living partly by publishing English translations of Latin authors.

 

But Dryden was a restoration writer without a puritanical bone in his body, who certainly had no objections to dancing. On the contrary, his works are full of strikingly unpuritanical passages like this chorus from his Secular Masque, which accompanies a "Dance of Diana's attendants":

 

Then our Age was in it's Prime,

Free from Rage, and free from Crime,

A very Merry, Dancing, Drinking,

Laughing, Quaffing, and unthinking Time.

 

As for sex, there's this from Venus a bit later in the same work:

 

Calms appear, when Storms are past;

Love will have his Hour at last:

Nature is my kindly Care;

Mars destroys, and I repair;

Take me, take me, while you may,

Venus comes not ev'ry Day.

 

Cho. of all.

Take her, take her , &c.

 

And if we were to rescue John Dryden from eternal torment long enough to give him a Myers-Briggs personality test, I'm confident that "Glorious John" (as Walter Scott called him) would score towards the extroverted end of the scale.

 

In fact, Dryden's opinion about the placement of prepositions in relative clauses was part of a sort of public-relations campaign, framed as one of the ways that Restoration English (and therefore Restoration literature, and specifically his own writing) had improved on its Tudor and Elizabethan ancestors:

 

… the language, wit, and conversation of our age, are improved and refined above the last; and then it will not be difficult to infer, that our plays have received some part of those advantages. […]

 

… these absurdities, which those poets [e.g. Shakespeare, Fletcher, Jonson] committed, may more properly be called the age's fault than theirs. For, besides the want of education and learning, (which was their particular unhappiness,) they wanted the benefit of converse […] Their audiences knew no better; and therefore were satisfied with what they brought. Those who call theirs the Golden Age of Poetry, have only this reason for it, that they were then content with acorns, before they knew the use of bread …

 

Even a century later, in 1762, Bishop Lowth (whose grammar helped popularize "Dryden's rule") still treated the issue as a matter of stylistic preference, in a (purposely?) self-subverting sentence:

 

This is an idiom, which our language is strongly inclined to: it prevails in common conversation, and suits very well with the familiar style in writing: but the placing of the preposition before the relative, is more graceful, as well as more perspicuous; and agrees much better with the solemn and elevated style.

 

It seems to have been amateur peevologists of the 19th century who elevated this characteristic of "the solemn and elevated style" into a supposed grammatical rule — Fowler 1926, for example, calls it a "cherished superstition".

 

http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=2580

[AdamSmith]

The 'rule' against split infinitives is equally groundless.

 

The Origin of the Split Infinitive Rule

The idea that you shouldn’t put an adverb in the middle of an infinitive was mentioned earlier but was most prominently introduced by Henry Alford, the Dean of Canterbury, in his 1864 book The Queen’s English.Through the magic of Google Books, you can see the entry yourself.

 

Alford didn’t state it a rule though. Instead, in response to a correspondent who liked phrases such as “to scientifically illustrate,” he said he saw “no good reason” to split the infinitive. One reason Alford gave for his belief was that nobody was doing it (“. . . this practice is entirely unknown to English speakers and writers.”), but theOxford English Dictionary disagrees, reporting that split infinitives were widespread at the time.

 

In fact, many respected writers, both before and after Alford’s time, have employed split infinitives, including Thomas Cromwell, Daniel Defoe, Lord Byron, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Elizabeth Gaskell, Benjamin Franklin, and Elizabeth Barrett Browning.

 

The Fowler Brothers on the Split Infinitive Rule

From this shaky start, Alford’s opinion about split infinitives somehow made its way into the general consciousness and English school books, and it was taught as a rule to generations of children—and journalists, according the Fowler brothers, authors of the popular and enduring 1907 style guideThe King’s English. Although the Fowlers found the split infinitive “ugly,” they nevertheless felt that prohibitions had gone too far. They wrote, “The 'split' infinitive has taken such hold upon the consciences of journalists that, instead of warning the novice against splitting his infinitives, we must warn him against the curious superstition that the splitting or not splitting makes the difference between a good and a bad writer."

 

The rule never stuck with experts. Although I hesitate to say it isimpossible to find a credible grammar book that wholeheartedly recommends against split infinitives, I have never seen or heard of such a book. Even The Elements of Style(beloved by the public but often disparaged by modern experts for being overly prescriptive) does not recommend against split infinitives, but instead takes a practical approach: “Some infinitives seem to improve on being split, just as a stick of round stovewood does. ‘I cannot bring myself to really like the fellow.’ The sentence is relaxed, the meaning is clear, the violation is harmless and scarcely perceptible.”

 

Split Infinitives in Formal Writing

Even though early objectors claimed that split infinitives were the currency of the uneducated, a 2010 study by Moisés D. Perales-Escudero from the University of Michigan found that some split infinitives are common in formal situations: for example, the phrase to better understandcommonly appears in academic, magazine, and newspaper writing.

 

Sometimes You Can Avoid a Split Infinitive

Some split infinitives have become set phrases in English, such as Star Trek’s “to boldly go,” meaning that “to goboldly” would sound odd. In the case of a typical split infinitive, however, a writer can usually move the intervening words without much offense: “I’m going to generously frost these cupcakes,” becomes “I’m going to frost these cupcakes generously.”

 

In less common instances, moving the adverb makes the sentence awkward: “I want to quickly stop at the bank” becomes “I want to stop at the bankquickly.” (A more natural-sounding choice would be “I want to stop at the bank for a minute.”)

 

In some cases, moving the adverb can also change the meaning: “I’m going toreally sock him in the kisser,” means it’s going to be quite a punch, but “I’mreally going to sock him in the kisser,” conveys more of a sense of determination than a commentary on the strength of the impending punch. [Note: "I'm going to really sock him in the kisser" is an example of a split verbrather than a split infinitive. "Am going to" is a phrasal modal; it means "will."]

 

Finally, some sentences require a split infinitive: for example, in a 2004 Language Log post, Arnold Zwicky provides an instance in which a writer must split an infinitive: “. . . he expects the staff size to more than double within two years.” You can’t move “more than” anywhere else in that sentence without a major rewrite.

 

Should You Avoid Splitting Infinitives?

When faced with the clear lack of evidence that splitting infinitives is wrong, but also faced with the almost knee-jerk reaction that is common in the general population— “Split infinitives? Wrong!” (or the vague notion “I’m not sure what split infinitives are, but I think I heard they are wrong,”)—what’s a modern writer to do?

 

The only logical reason to avoid splitting infinitives is that there are still a lot of people who mistakenly think it is wrong. If you write from a position of power, split your infinitives as much as you want. Be guided by the sound and flow of your sentence. On the other hand, if you have to please others or avoid complaints, it’s safer to avoid splitting infinitives. There's no reason to deliberately split infinitives when you know it's going to upset people.

 

http://www.quickanddirtytips.com/education/grammar/split-infinitives?page=1

[Beancounter]

On his 74th birthday, a man got a gift certificate from his wife. The certificate paid for a visit to a medicine man living on a nearby reservation who was rumored to have a wonderful cure for erectile dysfunction. After being persuaded, he drove to the reservation, handed his ticket to the medicine man, and wondered what he was in for.

 

The old man handed a potion to him, and with a grip on his shoulder, warned, "This is a powerful medicine. You take only a teaspoonful, and then say '1-2-3.' When you do, you will become more manly than you have ever been in your life, and you can perform as long as you want."

 

The man was encouraged. As he walked away, he turned and asked, "How do I stop the medicine from working?"

 

"Your partner must say '1-2-3-4'," he responded, "but when she does, the medicine will not work again until the next full moon."

 

He was very eager to see if it worked so he went home, showered, shaved and took a spoonful of the medicine. Then he invited his wife to join him in the bedroom. When she came in, he took off his clothes and said, "1-2-3!"

 

Immediately, he was the manliest of men. His wife was excited and began throwing off her clothes. Then she asked, "What was the '1-2-3' for?"

 

And that, boys and girls, is why we should never end our sentences with a preposition, because we could end up with a dangling participle.

[Beancounter]

A snobbish English teacher was sitting in an Atlanta airport coffee shop waiting for her flight back to Connecticut, when a friendly Southern Belle sat down next to her.

 

"Where y'all goin' to?" asked the Southern Belle.

 

Turning her nose in the air, the snob replied "I don't answer people who end their sentences with prepositions."

 

The Southern Belle thought a moment, and tried again.

 

"Where y'all goin' to, BITCH?"

[AdamSmith]

A snobbish English teacher was sitting in an Atlanta airport coffee shop waiting for her flight back to Connecticut, when a friendly Southern Belle sat down next to her.

 

"Where y'all goin' to?" asked the Southern Belle.

 

Turning her nose in the air, the snob replied "I don't answer people who end their sentences with prepositions."

 

The Southern Belle thought a moment, and tried again.

 

"Where y'all goin' to, BITCH?"

Snooty Realtor: "Madam, this house doesn't have a flaw."

 

Southern Belle: "Then what do y'all walk on?"

 

[+ Charlie]

Ehem.

 

 

 

 

The tennis match was rained off. | Rained off the tennis match was. [not good English]

 

http://blog.oxforddictionaries.com/2011/11/grammar-myths-prepositions/

The correct preposition in this case is: The tennis match was rained out.

(See, I actually read every word!)

[+ Charlie]

I haven't read so much Dryden since I left graduate school.

[AdamSmith]

The correct preposition in this case is: The tennis match was rained out.

(See, I actually read every word!)

Note the source though: 'rained off' seems to be the common UK expression.

[+ Charlie]

I have never heard that usage at Wimbledon.

[AdamSmith]

I have never heard that usage at Wimbledon.

How about at Royal Ascot?

[+ Charlie]

Racing folk rarely care about tennis. E2R had to be dragged to Wimbledon when Virginia Wade won it in 1977.

[mike carey]

I checked the OED and 'rained off' is British usage and 'rained out' US and Canadian. I wouldn't use either, both sound 'off' to me. I would say delayed by or cancelled because of rain.

[RM]

Thanks for the list, AZ.

 

I disagree about "price point" though. IME, the phrase (in plural) represents the set of practical pricing options under consideration.

 

Wiki has an odd way of putting it: "Price points are prices at which demand for a given product is supposed to stay relatively high."

 

And why did it take them so long (2015) to include "takeout."

Disagree with you about "price point." It has a perfectly good meaning as you've described, but I've never heard anyone use it except when they mean "price." Except maybe on Shark Tank.

[+ purplekow]

The 'rule' against split infinitives is equally groundless.

 

The Origin of the Split Infinitive Rule

There's no reason to deliberately split infinitives when you know it's going to upset people.

 

http://www.quickanddirtytips.com/education/grammar/split-infinitives?page=1

And yet, he does.

[Despardo]

And yet, he does.

I have made peace with the split infinitive rule. My father taught English for 45 years, so I was not allowed to make grammatical mistakes after the age of about two. Splitting infinitives is one of the least grievous of grammatical mistakes--way down there with farther vs. further. Both "laws" date only to about the end of the 19th century, and were set in stone by Strunk & White in the Elements of Style, a useful, but particularly fussy guide to good writing that the greatest of authors have had the good sense to ignore. [i stand corrected after reading the previous post by Adam Smith that S & W does not insist on the split infinitive rule.]

 

I try generally to avoid splitting infinitives simply out of habit, but there are times when splitting them is perfectly OK. The original objection to splitting an infinitive was that some grammarians felt that to do so overly emphasizes the adverb in the sentence. An example would be "She began to unwrap the package carefully" as opposed to "She began to carefully unwrap the package." However, sometimes one wants to emphasize the adverb, as in "He needed to thoroughly remove all traces of blood from his hands."[Also, explained above.]

 

I am more annoyed by the careless placement of the qualifier "only" which should be positioned as closely as possible to the word that it is intended to modify. Examples: "He wanted only to appease her wrath" vs. "He only wanted to appease her wrath." There are two different meanings here.

 

For those who are horrified by the use of "hopefully" rather than "it is to be hoped" possibly there is an out. The issue is that hopefully is an adverb and therefore must modify a verb, an adjective or another adverb. So, in the sentence "Hopefully the sun will rise tomorrow" the only word that "hopefully" can modify is the verb "rise." This means that the sun itself will be hopeful when it rises. I fully allow that "It is to be hoped that the sun will rise tomorrow" while correct is awkward. The "out" is that one just might consider that in this case the term "hopefully" is an elision for the term "speaking hopefully" which, while a bit of a stretch, does get one out of the grammatical difficulty.

 

The now ubiquitous misuse of the verbs "lie" and "lay" are to me like chalk on a blackboard. A casual acquaintance once asked me to explain the difference. I started by saying that "to lay" is a transitive verb, and "to lie" is intransitive. My friend then asked what that meant. OK, so I then explained that a transitive verb takes an object, while an intransitive verb does not. He then asked me what an object was, at which point I suggested we just go on eating our lunch.

[Despardo]

"Latin-obsessed 17th-century introverts"

 

Some Language Log readers have long suspected me of secret prescriptivist sympathies, and I'm about to add fuel to the fire by standing up for John Dryden. Sort of.

 

It all starts with today's SMBC. A student asks "Can I end my sentence with a preposition?", and the teacher responds "Good question! Let's see what a group of Latin-obsessed 17th century introverts decided!" The introverts' cartooned answer:

 

http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/myl/SMBCprep1.png

 

 

And they add, in the aftercomic:

 

http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/myl/SMBCprepAfter.gif

 

Now, there's no question that the whole business about final prepositions involves layers on layers of foolishness. And there's no question that John Dryden set the foolishness in motion in 1672 (see "Hot Dryden-on-Jonson action", 5/1/2007), a date that certainly falls within the 17th century. And it's fair to call Dryden "Latin-obsessed" — all educated Europeans were steeped in Latin grammar in those days, and Dryden in particular made his living partly by publishing English translations of Latin authors.

 

But Dryden was a restoration writer without a puritanical bone in his body, who certainly had no objections to dancing. On the contrary, his works are full of strikingly unpuritanical passages like this chorus from his Secular Masque, which accompanies a "Dance of Diana's attendants":

 

Then our Age was in it's Prime,

Free from Rage, and free from Crime,

A very Merry, Dancing, Drinking,

Laughing, Quaffing, and unthinking Time.

 

As for sex, there's this from Venus a bit later in the same work:

 

Calms appear, when Storms are past;

Love will have his Hour at last:

Nature is my kindly Care;

Mars destroys, and I repair;

Take me, take me, while you may,

Venus comes not ev'ry Day.

 

Cho. of all.

Take her, take her , &c.

 

And if we were to rescue John Dryden from eternal torment long enough to give him a Myers-Briggs personality test, I'm confident that "Glorious John" (as Walter Scott called him) would score towards the extroverted end of the scale.

 

In fact, Dryden's opinion about the placement of prepositions in relative clauses was part of a sort of public-relations campaign, framed as one of the ways that Restoration English (and therefore Restoration literature, and specifically his own writing) had improved on its Tudor and Elizabethan ancestors:

 

… the language, wit, and conversation of our age, are improved and refined above the last; and then it will not be difficult to infer, that our plays have received some part of those advantages. […]

 

… these absurdities, which those poets [e.g. Shakespeare, Fletcher, Jonson] committed, may more properly be called the age's fault than theirs. For, besides the want of education and learning, (which was their particular unhappiness,) they wanted the benefit of converse […] Their audiences knew no better; and therefore were satisfied with what they brought. Those who call theirs the Golden Age of Poetry, have only this reason for it, that they were then content with acorns, before they knew the use of bread …

 

Even a century later, in 1762, Bishop Lowth (whose grammar helped popularize "Dryden's rule") still treated the issue as a matter of stylistic preference, in a (purposely?) self-subverting sentence:

 

This is an idiom, which our language is strongly inclined to: it prevails in common conversation, and suits very well with the familiar style in writing: but the placing of the preposition before the relative, is more graceful, as well as more perspicuous; and agrees much better with the solemn and elevated style.

 

It seems to have been amateur peevologists of the 19th century who elevated this characteristic of "the solemn and elevated style" into a supposed grammatical rule — Fowler 1926, for example, calls it a "cherished superstition".

 

http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=2580

Dryden was really quite marvelous. His decline in popularity compared to that of Pope stems from the fact that Dryden's subject matter was generally very topical, such that the targets of his satire are pretty obscure to modern readers.

[Guy Fawkes]

Somebody told me you were in my dog house. You're not a puppy, get your ass into the bedroom! However, you can chew on the ball-gag if it'll make you happy.

(I'm not mean just assertive)

 

http://www.hypnosisisacureforme.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/04/hypnosis-is-a-cure-for-me-e1460359121602.jpg z

 

https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/736x/40/fc/bc/40fcbce49c490d18a51ad771a534bd3d.jpg

 

http://i1098.photobucket.com/albums/g367/Rickeeee/Mobile%20Uploads/F8DEC969-A1A4-4A82-86FF-5707E9403481_zpsqkhi9ulh.jpg

[oscarkin]

I haven't read so much Dryden since I left graduate school.

A little Dryden goes a long way.

[oscarkin]

The only logical reason to avoid splitting infinitives is that there are still a lot of people who mistakenly think it is wrong. If you write from a position of power, split your infinitives as much as you want. Be guided by the sound and flow of your sentence. On the other hand, if you have to please others or avoid complaints, it’s safer to avoid splitting infinitives. There's no reason to deliberately split infinitives when you know it's going to upset people.

Some of us like to harmlessly act out.

[AdamSmith]

Hmm!

 

http://cdn.quotationof.com/images/john-drydens-quotes-4.jpg

[+ honcho]

Unrelated to the topic of Grammar, but pursuant to the previous post, there was a quotation of William Blake

calligraphed onto a wooden placard in my college library:

 

"The fool who persists in his folly will become wise".

 

 

(It was actually misquoted as "If a fool persists in his folly, he shall become wise")

[AdamSmith]

Unrelated to the topic of Grammar, but pursuant to the previous post, there was a quotation of William Blake

calligraphed onto a wooden placard in my college library:

 

"The fool who persists in his folly will become wise".

 

 

(It was actually misquoted as "If a fool persists in his folly, he shall become wise")

Blake is incomparably sublime.

 

The tigers of wrath are wiser than the horses of instruction.

 

The standing water breeds reptiles of the mind.

 

And my personal motto...

 

The road of excess leads to the palace of wisdom.

[bobchitown]

On another blog I just ran across "I and my wife was..." There is no hope for humanity.

[swallows22]

Time for a new discussion. A question I could never answer on tests as I was growing up. Finally, found someone to explain it to me.

 

Off you go------between vis-a vis among. When you have the answer, read all the literate news reporters and see how they mess it up. Same as elder and eldest.