Split infinitives, misplaced prepositions and missing hyphens

It's a sad day for the poor old hyphen. As the BBC explains, the Oxford English Dictionary has hauled it out of 16,000 words. Leap-frog is now officially leapfrog. Pot-belly has become pot belly. Some lucky person must have had a fun time deciding which words got split into two and which got squashed together. Can you imagine the debates? Not to mention the sign-off loop. (Er, signoff? sign off? sign-off?)

So, where do you stand on the whole grammar thing? Will you be learning the new non-hyphenated words off by heart? (if you do 16 a day, I'm sure you'll get there eventually.) Is it part of a communicator's job to know the rules and stick to them?  Do you know where to put your apostrophes, commas and semi-colons?

My grammatical knowledge should be pretty good. I did Latin to O-level, Spanish, English and German to A-level and linguistics as part of my comms degree. At one time I knew the phonetic alphabet and I even wrote an essay about why we need a level of morphology. (Both of which have obviously come in VERY handy, and I am in great demand as an after dinner speaker.)

But my personal approach is generally to write as I speak. I know the grammatical rules, but I break them. I start sentences with conjunctions and end them with prepositions. I split infinitives. I abbreviate liberally. I put commas where I want people to sense a pause in a sentence, not where they grammatically should be.

It's a personal style thing - I like people to be able to hear someone speaking when they read their notes. My writing on here is very informal, because that's how I am. If I'm ghost-writing for a leader, I'll try and copy their rhythms and the way they talk.  Even in 'non-personal' writing, for me, sticking totally to the rules can make things feel stuffy and inaccessible. If a normal person wouldn't say it in everyday speech, I'm not going to write it. 

At the same time, I'm aware there must be people who think I just don't know my grammar ... and how appalling for someone who works in communication! Years ago my Finance Director used to send notes back down to me with angry red rings around the offending items. (I ignored him.)

As for things like hyphens, let's just say I won't be learning my 16 a day. I found out from the BBC article that I've been calling that sugary frozen stuff 'ice cream' all these years, when it should have been 'ice-cream'. My perfectionism doesn't extend to beating myself up about it.

I do think some rules shouldn't be broken, though. I get really irritated when I see professionally-produced materials with apostrophies in the wrong place. It was noticeable enough for my last team to buy me Eats, Shoots and Leaves for one of my birthday presents. (I think it was also something to do with the emails they used to suffer saying things like: 'YOUR = POSSESSION.  YOUR BOOK. YOUR DESK.  YOU'RE = SHORT FOR 'YOU ARE'!!!)

So, where do you stand on this one? (I'm predicting Liam may be the first to comment. I've just labelled him on Facebook as 'person most likely to correct my grammar'.  Or TRY, at any rate ... )

Sue

PS I've just found this site from Oxford Dictionaries - has a good list of grammar Q&As from their experts.

Comments

[Liam]

I'd hate to disappoint you Sue (I have the advantage of being in a different timezone so I can get in first).

My theory is that most of us remember three or four grammatical rules and always follow them...but then ignore other things that other people spot.

There are also imagined rules that people enforce (check out the one about ending a sentence with a preposition).

And then there are rules that have probably died years ago (like the one that says I shouldn't have started this sentence with a preposition).

But I think the point of a language is that it allows diverse people to understand each other. When we don't stick to common rules it can cause misunderstanding and even worse.

Yet we can all thing of times when being pedantic just means we come up with awful sentences.

As Winston Churchill said "up with this I will not put..."

Liam

[Melissa Dark]

Hi Sue,

I totally agree with you! I actually think a solid understanding of grammar is a good thing, especially for a communicator. Knowing the rules makes you understand how and when to break them. It's kind of like chefs understanding each of their ingredients, not just how to mix them in a bowl. Understanding points of grammar gives you the basic technique from which to build your writing.

I also spend a bit of my time teaching business writing. One of the things I try to get across to my students is that some rules are more important than others. But rules are rules and - as Liam so rightly points out - the idea of writing is to convey a message and if you don't follow the commonly understood rules then you run the risk of your message not being understood.

VBut - like you - I hate those grammar pedants (in my experience, generally CFOs - don't know why!) who return writing with red marks and who delete all the "that"s. But I have joined a Facebook group called "If you don't know the difference between 'their' and 'they're' you deserve to die" - I just thought that was funny.

- Melissa

[Liam]

I know this is off the subject but in a taxi to the airport yesterday in New York, the driver had a phone-in show on the radio.

The topic being discussed was the threat posed to America by high levels of foreign investment.

On comes 'Carmine from Queens...'

"...anyone who sells their house to a Greek is a traitor...in my book, it's plain unpatriotic - if you sell your house you're a traitor - you got to protect our culture and our language - selling your house makes you, a traitor - a T R A Y T E R - I can't spell it out any clearer..."

Haitian cab driver nearly crashes laughing!

Liam

[Jeroen Vanstiphout]

First off, be glad you don't have to write in Dutch. Our spelling changes every few years or so. Keeps it challenging...

I'm a bit of a spelling nazi myself, but I've learned to hold back long time ago. People don't really like being corrected, apparantly :-) Ah well, as long as the professionals keep doing a good job...
(Communication on the internet is a lost cause anyway)

To add to what Melissa said: it's not just a matter of being understood, it's even more a matter of credibility. Your message maybe smart and sensible, if make a lot of spelling and grammar mistakes when writing it, no one is going to take it serious.

Or was it seriously?

P.S. http://memewatch.com/thelist/archives/pix/morans.html

[Graeme Ginsberg]

Really interesting and amusing, Sue, and something I constantly find myself talking to people about.

I guess what comes to mind initially is evolution. For example, Shakespeare wrote one way, Dickens another, Orwell another, Iain Banks another. Different times, different language.

So, I ask myself, who lays down these rules? Those wonderful intellectuals in their tweeds on the editorial board of the Oxford English Dictionary? The average person on the Clapham omnibus?

Perhaps it’s that old debate around “Should we prescribe language rules or do we only describe the understood conventions that already exist?”

Mixing these questions together, some thoughts occur to me …

1. Generations
Those pesky youngsters are always looking at the rules, questioning them, ridiculing them and breaking them.

Over the ages, they’ve said:

(a) “Prithee, Sirrah, is this a rule I see before me? With a nonny and a no, fiddle de dee, ‘tis the way wherein madness lies and I’ll go to bed at noon.”

(b) “Rules? Piffle and humbug. These tyrants believe that they have a panacea for the people, but they are only keeping us subdued in perambulators for life.”

(c) “Hey, man, you and your rules are freaking me out. You’ve gotta get with it or you’re history.”

(d) “Fascist rule-makers on yer bike, you’re rubbish.”

(e) “We h8 rls.”

Or something like that. In every generation, there are keepers of language and there are the (young) upstarts who challenge the rules. The keepers fight their corner, saying the young are disrespectfully violating a heritage of great language. The young are (shock and horror) abbreviating, splitting infinitives, using slang, even (oh no) swearing… The keepers reject the new grammar, vocabulary and punctuation as ‘uneducated’, ‘crass’, etc, but finally a critical mass is reached and they realise that their rules are no longer appropriate and are redundant. They have to give in because the weight of society and new usage are too great to ignore and they very grudgingly change their dictionaries to accommodate the new words and grammar.

When I was in primary school, I had a really old-fashioned English teacher. He gave us a spelling test, a dictation and a punctuation test every week (wot fun!). And every week we all pleaded to be given ‘an essay’ (free composition), rather than one of these – we knew that in these free compositions, we could write what we wanted, in the way we wanted. When we did manage to convince him (I suppose even the pre-War curriculum he was following allowed for a couple of these each term), I wrote about crossing the universe in spaceships, travelling in a time machine, pursuing crooks as a policeman armed with a revolver, and so on – I wrote more as I thought and let my grammar go a bit all over the place. And, even though he always awarded me a D- (if I was lucky) – because, to get a good mark, you had to write descriptive pieces about people sitting by the seaside or in fields etc – I still continued to do it because there were too many rules in his classes and I wanted to break them and have fun.

Before I disappear down memory lane, the point I’m trying to get down to is about generations… My guess is that Blackbeltdojo readers are, like Melcrum’s report readers, primarily in their 30s, 40s and some 50s – perhaps various readers in their 20s and 60s also. We’re professional people – serious at work, sure, but we’re also real people. We go to movies, we listen to music, we’re out and about in the real world, the now-world and not the world of yesteryear where thing were more regulated and pedantic.

Being in your 30s, 40s and 50s in the 1960s isn’t what it is nowadays. In the 1960s, being in your 40s or 50s meant that you were 20 during the post-War years. You still had quite a wait before rock ’n’ roll, Rebel Without A Cause and Kerouac. By contrast, those now in their 40s and even 50s were in their 20s when Pink Floyd were quietly questioning the rules of business, language and society with Dark Side of the Moon and subsequently when the punks were taking loud, snarly pot-shots at everyone and everything.

My point is that societies move on and so do the people and their languages. That’s just the way it is. And in the UK, over the years this has been heading to something ever looser, ever more expressive. We split infinitives, contract words, mess about with grammar and swear.

2. Generations – the young become old
The young grow up and become the new keepers of language. But, by the time they do, they have jobs, responsibilities, children – they put away their ripped jeans and bandannas and stick on their parents’ tweeds (albeit with a t-shirt on underneath). They think nostalgically to their carefree, rebellious days, feel they’ve taken it as far as they want to and then do what they attacked their predecessors for --- they resist as their youngers try to move language along again.

Having been oh-so-rebellious with language and punctuation when I was young, I’m a little embarrassed to complain at how ‘the youth of today’ (crikey wot a prudish term!) have become so disrespectful of the English language… in particular, how can these young people insist on using mobile phone texting language and, unforgivably, how can they take it into their everyday, and even formal, writing! “These people will one day be the keepers of language,” I complain, “and they’re going to let our language go to pot!”

[Oh well, at least with all those letters cut out of words, we can save some trees – the OED will be half the length it is now…]

3. Culture
Generations are, I reckon, only part of the story – the really big influence must be culture. Once upon a time, the British spread their language and customs around the world, throwing all their resources into defending their scones and clipped accents (or at least, the richer, powerful classes did).

Then some British people went to the US and their descendants (rebellious youngsters) bit back. First they fought on the fields and won their independence, gaining their freedom to take the British language on US soil in any direction they wanted. Then, later, when they made up with the Brits and everyone became firm ‘chums’/’buddies’ (depending on the perspective), the US people waded into the British culture. The invasion then went crazy with the spread of media. The Marx Brothers, The Maltese Falcon, Presley… Suddenly, the UK’s popular culture was incorporating elements of US grammar, or being influenced by it, looser and slanged – the Beatles were loving you yeah yeah yeah, the Stones couldn’t get themselves no satisfaction, etc. Then it was like Duchamps had been let loose in the world of words and the keepers of the British language were in real trouble… US detective shows like Starsky & Hutch, Taxi Driver, Grease, rap music, Nirvana, Tarantino, Britney Spears… Split infinitives and the death of ‘to whom’ were the just the minor casualties. Swearing in the broadsheets.

[I suppose it’s interesting given the level of influence of the US on British English that we haven’t adopted US spelling. ‘Travelling’ with a double ‘l’, ‘recognise’ with an ‘s’ not a ‘z’. There’s also the punctuation --- we don’t put the comma on the inside of the inverted comma --- we say, “They say it’s ‘stylish’, because they use the comma”, rather than “They say it’s ‘stylish,’ because they use the comma”.]

With the opening up of British society, another very important cultural effect came about --- the end of received pronunciation in the media. The keepers of language in the UK media realised that people didn’t want to see only privately schooled hosts on Blue Peter or Top of the Pops. Suddenly, everything opened up and the public could read articles or watch TV programmes written by and about people from all the various regions of the UK, and also really importantly in terms of influence, from all the many cultures that lived in the country – multicultural society equals multidimensional language and grammar. Language has been going through a colossal mutation and continues to do so. Not only can’t the keepers of language keep up, the keepers of language are from all over the UK, multiregional and multicultural.

4. It’s about context
Ultimately, in these liberated and multicultural times, I think a lot of it comes down to context and I think there are always going to be rules for particular contexts – basically, a business plan isn’t an email to a friend. There are levels of expectation that people have and not observing the rules can raise eyebrows or even draw criticism. If I say in a business plan, “This new thing we’ve got is sort of like the thing I saw on TV the other day, but it’s much wickeder”, I’m not going to inspire much confidence in my new product. At the same time, if I write to a friend and say, “Did you by chance view that programme on the television last Tuesday?”, they’ll think I’m being a bit odd/old-fashioned/ridiculous.

And even in the freest emails I might write to friends, I have rules – partly inherited and partly of my own making. It may have abbreviations all over the place, broken and disjointed stream-of-consciousness grammar, etc, but there are still rules – I’m a pretty good speller (in spite of the fact that I’ve been using computers so long and have got lazy because of the autocorrect facility), and there does tend to be a sort of sense in there for the recipient to pick out. I don’t use points in ‘eg’ or ‘ie’ in one paragraph and then use them later in another, etc.

In the early 90s, I wrote and edited personal finance books primarily for US customers. They were in US English (but not US commas inside the inverted commas fortunately!), very colloquial and modern in their house style with the thought that less punctuation is more --- for example, eliminate the capital letters whenever you can and the points between ‘ie’, ‘eg’, etc. A couple of years later, I was editor and publisher of newspapers and books for teachers of English as a foreign/second language. They were written in British English but were for the international industry, and the people who read them ranged from young people just out of university to those who’d been in the industry for 30 years. But these EFL teachers taught real, practical English, not English for reading Dickens, and, I suppose also because of the generation issues mentioned above and the down-to-earth nature of the people who went off all over the globe to teach, we went with plain, relaxed English.

We had style guides in both these companies, as we do in Melcrum. Every publisher has its own (they all seem to vary – no ultimate language keeper in publishing thankfully – although it can also be confusing as well as liberating). So, lots of rules everywhere. All the more so in business and business publishing. – no contractions in business plans, contracts and, very strangely I find, not even in emails from customers, clients and service providers – even ones I know well. The last of these I find very strange given the generational characteristics I mentioned at the beginning and the age of the people we all deal with.

THE UPSHOT
Ultimately, I see grammar as an evolving thing. I do balk at kids who talk and spell in mobile phone text language. There’s something about the discipline that seems to have gone out of teaching and learning also. They’ll be expert in one, looser way of writing, which may be great for everyday application, but won’t have the flexibility and ability to write for different contexts. No business is going to accept writing in mobile text form.

At the same time, I find some of the continued, formal use of grammar slightly grating. Even Metro, the free, daily newspaper, seemingly a down-to-earth publication with bits of news and politics briefly punctuating the latest gossip about pop and movie stars, doesn’t contract people’s quotes ---- “Britney Spears said ‘I cannot believe all the rubbish that is written about me – it makes me feel like I did not ever have a normal life.” I hardly think that’s how she said it... And not just in the quotes – even in the text of newspaper articles, I find it jars when I don’t find contractions to “isn’t”, “don’t”, “can’t” etc. If I’m reading how I think – which is how I read a paper – then I expect contractions.

Perhaps a bit interestingly, I use the word “quotes” above rather than quotations – through common usage, the first now sounds right to me and the second wrong in the context of someone being quoted in an interview (rather than something appearing in the Oxford Book of Quotations, for example.) I split infinitives because it just sounds better sometimes in the context – “to boldly go”, rather than “to go boldly” and definitely not “boldly to go”.

Perhaps grammar has become more subjective. Everyone finds their own way through the conventions. Through trial and error they find out what is accepted by readers (hence editors and organizations that set guidelines) and what resonates.

Sorry – this has become a bit of a ramble. There are some points I’d like to take into discussion about internal communication around this (messages, audiences, channels, generations, etc), but I’ve taken up enough room here – I’ll take it into the Melcrum blog and CommsNetwork…

[By way of an aside, though, I would recommend the book Riddley Walker by Russell Hoban – an extraordinary book written with a grammar and vocabulary of the writer’s own creation. It makes total sense in the context and is totally consistent.]

Graeme

[Mr Humblepie]

...and someone just pointed out to me that "and" is a conjunction - not a preposition... a simple, but embarassing mistake

hem hem

[Mrs Independence]

Is it me, or has sue spelled 'apostrophes' incorrectly in the original entry? Surely it shouldn't be 'apostrophies'?

[Betibw]

Apostrophies? Rhythmns? For Heaven's sake!

[Sue]

Which is why the good people at Microsoft put spell checking facilities in their software. Typepad, unless I've missed it (quite possible - I'm open to directions!) doesn't have such things.

Small but interesting point in there, actually. Differing views from people on Black Belts on how much they help with leaders' blogs. Ghost-writing blogs is not on, in my book, totally against the spirit of them. But some IC people do check leaders' posts for spelling & grammar. Others take the view that it's their blog, their style, why interfere. (But then, as with my old finance director I mentioned in the post, and the comments here, some people will take issue...)