The apostrophe is... like... such a problem... y'know?

Apparently Walt and Richard Nordquist are not the only ones concerned about the decline in standards of written and spoken English. Comments on yesterday's post have come from:


Agent 2 - What a relief to know that the apostrophe catastrophe is grinding on someone else. I see it everyday but of course it is not on something that has spellcheck. Signs in stores, or flyers, "store hour's" and "two pizza's" plus the name "the Caruso's (when it is not possessive!)


I am not a daughter of an English teacher. I have trouble with dangling participles and when to use lay, lie, who and whom, however can usually avoid those in a conversation, but you can't avoid seeing an apostrophe and that really makes you look dumb!

Agent 17 - It won’t do any good as it has metastasized, but please attack the creeping misuse of “I am like”. I even hear it from TV talking heads.....aaaargh!

Unfortunately, William Safire has shuffled off this mortal coil, but his column "On Language" marches on in the New York Times. [Shouldn't there be commas after "column" and the close quote mark following "Language"? Ed.] Walt also recommends the collection of columns published under the same title in 1980 and reprinted umpteen times since.

And... this is for Ed.... the UK news and satire magazine Private Eye has for years ended the letters column in its print edition with a section now called "Pedants Corner". The previous title was "Pedant's Corner", but a pedant argued that, since there were many contributors, it should be called "Pedants' Corner", and... you get the point. Perhaps Ian Hislop and Richard Nordquist are related? We should be told!

How we check our grammar

Ed. here. Walt (shown here at his writing desk) receives the occasional compliment on "his" use of English -- proper yet at the same time creative. I'll give Walt the "creative" part, but it is my job to ensure the "proper".
An assiduous reader wants to know what reference works we -- I -- use to avoid any faux pas. Naturally we have Fowler as our final arbiter. Some might think that explains our "Victorian" vocabulary and syntax, but they would be wrong! The first edition of Fowler was not published until 1926, during the reign of George V. Surely that is modern enough, and I prefer it to the 1965 second editon. The world -- and English -- had gone to hell by 1965.

When overindulgence renders me incapable of picking Fowler off the library shelf, I have recourse to a newer and much lighter work, which I commend to all aspiring writers and editors. It is The Transitive Vampire: A Handbook of Grammar for the Innocent, the Eager, and the Doomed, by Karen Elizabeth Gordon (Times Books, New York, 1984).

William Safire, whose classic On Language is also on Walt's bookshelf, called The Transitive Vampire "a book to sink your fangs into". I imagine Ms Gordon's tongue stuck firmly and permanently in her cheek as she crafts rules and examples of proper usage like this one:

A pronoun in apposition to a noun or another pronoun has the same case as the word it identifies.
Two misfits, he and she, plighted their troth in this haphazard way.
Let's you and me get together and do away with some of the possibilities.
(You and me are in apposition with 's, which equals us, the object of let.)

Karen Elizabeth Gordon wrote a companion volume, The Well-Tempered Sentence, which is chiefly concerned with proper punctuation, including Walt's pet peeve, the misuse of the apostrophe! There are second editions of both works: The New Well-Tempered Sentence and The Deluxe Transitive Vampire. All these fine (and incidentally funny) books may be found at the usual riverine source.

Crusade for good English

Where is William Safire when we need him so desperately? Alas, he shuffled off the mortal coil back in 2009, and, since no-one has stepped up to the plate, perhaps Walt and Ed. can at least get into the on-deck circle.

Wherever Mr. Safire is, I hope he can't read that introduction. He was a long-time political columnist for the New York Times and the author of "On Language" in the New York Times Magazine. That column dealt with popular etymology, new or unusual usages, and other language-related topics, including the avoidance of overwrought and overused clichés.

Walt has a long-standing love affair with the English language, and was a great admirer of Mr. Safire's efforts to promote good (and witty) usage. A collection of his columns appeared in book form as On Language (Times Books, 1981) and has a place of honour in Walt's working library.

It's good, in a way, that William Safire is not alive today to see what has become of the language of Shakespeare, Milton and Churchill. Or great American writers and speakers like John Steinbeck, William Faulkner, Tom Wolfe and William F. Buckley Jr. Safire must have seen the dumbing-down of the language coming. Not just our language but our entire culture. Perhaps he was glad enough to leave the West to its decline.

Since the advent of "electronic communication", e-mail -- no-one writes proper letters any more -- and "text talk", the English language is not just in decline, but in free-fall. There are a few brave souls who, like King Cnut [careful... Ed.] are trying to stem the tide of illiteracy that threatens to inundate us. Over the next couple of weeks, Walt and Ed. will post some of their writings, with the aim of encouraging our dear readers to write (and speak) better, and eschew "English for dummies",

We begin with a link to "Neil Pasricha’s ‘awesome’ blog helped destroy language", by the Toronto Star's Heather Mallick. In this piece, Ms Mallick inveighs against "linguistic bleaching", which she calls a crime. She refers to the misuse of words in a way that drains them of meaning. Words like "awesome", which is used so often now that it has become awful... and not in the old sense of "full of awe". Please read and heed.

A big thank-you (note the hyphen) to Agents 6 and 17 for pushing us to do this.

Adieu, Safire

A large book in the middle of the centre shelf of Walt's working library is On Language, by William Safire. Mr. Safire died on September 27th.

I like to think he would have written "died" rather than "passed away". That was the kind of man he was -- one who valued plain and precise speech, but correctness first!

William Safire was a lexicographer and a pundit. One pundit more or less makes no difference. But capable and knowledgeable lexicographers are a rare breed.

Mr. Safire was a maven, "one who understands". He understood that the English language, especially as spoken and written by today's media personalities, is being debased. He waged a lifelong struggle for correct (but not politically correct) and creative speech.

William Safire will be missed by all who, like Walt, love our language.