Quotes About Grammar

In fact, these reference works, with their careful attention to history, literature, and actual usage, are the most adamant debunkers of grammatical nonsense. (This is less true of style sheets drawn up by newspapers and professional societies, and of manuals written by amateurs such as critics and journalists, which tend to mindlessly reproduce the folklore of previous guides.)

The authors of Merriam-Webster's Dictionary of English Usage, having surveyed the uses of the two forms over six hundred years, conclude, "The traditional rules about shall and will do not appear to have described real usage of these words precisely at any time, although there is no question that they do describe the usage of some people some of the time and that they are more applicable in England than elsewhere.

Most disputes about "correct" usage are questions of custom and authority rather than grammatical logic (see "The Language Mavens" in my book The Language Instinct), and in these disputes in particular, both parties have grammatical logic on their side. Their

That's right: when it comes to correct English, there's no one in charge; the lunatics are running the asylum.

Because verbs have the power to dictate how a sentence conveys who did what to whom, one cannot sort out the roles in a sentence without looking up the verb. That is why your grammar teacher got it wrong when she told you that the subject of the sentence is the "doer of the action." The subject of the sentence is often the doer, but only when the verb says so;

The dative is a pair of constructions

In traditional grammars the two phrases are called the indirect and direct objects; linguists today usually call them simply the "first object" and the "second object." The term dative, by the way, has nothing to do with dates; it comes from the Latin word for "give.

grammar specifies how words may combine to express meanings;

Though bad writing has always been with us, the rules of correct usage are the smallest part of the problem. Any competent copy editor can turn a passage that is turgid, opaque, and filled with grammatical errors into a passage that is turgid, opaque, and free of grammatical errors. Rules of usage are well worth mastering, but they pale in importance behind principles of clarity, style, coherence, and consideration for the reader.

And every word has at most one inflectional suffix. We never get opensed or opensing, nor do the plural -s and possessive s stack up when several owners own something: the dogs' blanket, not the dogs's (dogzez) blanket. Finally

according to the transition probabilities of English. Remember Chomsky's sentence Colorless green ideas sleep furiously. He contrived it not only to show that nonsense can be grammatical but also to show that improbable word sequences can be grammatical. In English texts the probability that the word colorless is followed by the word green is surely zero. So is the probability that green is followed by ideas, ideas by sleep, and sleep by furiously.

Here is how one technology executive explains why he rejects job applications filled with errors of grammar and punctuation: "If it takes someone more than 20 years to notice how to properly use it's, then that's not a learning curve I'm comfortable with.

I also get a perverse pleasure from correcting students who refer to an important piece of data or write that this data is important. (Data is the plural of datum, I tell them, so one ought to say, The datum is important; The data are important.) Yet

He constructed a vast labyrinthine of periods, made impassable by the piling-up of clauses upon clauses--clauses in which oversight and bad grammar seemed manifestations of disdain.

plural is generally formed from the singular by the addition of s or es.

It is very easy to learn how to speak and write correctly, as for all purposes of ordinary conversation and communication

A Pronoun is a word used for or instead of a noun to keep us from repeating the same noun too often. Pronouns, like nouns, have case, number, gender and person. There are three kinds of pronouns, personal, relative and adjective.

The Comma: The office of the Comma is to show the slightest separation which calls for punctuation at all. It should be omitted whenever possible. It is used to mark the least divisions of a sentence.

All the words in the English language are divided into nine great classes. These classes are called the Parts of Speech. They are Article, Noun, Adjective, Pronoun, Verb, Adverb, Preposition, Conjunction and Interjection.

There are two guiding principles in the choice of words,—good use and good taste. Good use tells us whether a word is right or wrong; good taste, whether it is adapted to our purpose or not.

Hi. Thx for this. No idea. Sorry. L——, Your inquiry defeats me grammatically. Cheers.

Conoscevo gli adulti, tranne un verbo che loro esageravano a ingrandire: amare. Mi infastidiva l'uso. In prima media lo studio della grammatica latina l'adoperava per esempio di prima coniugazione, con l'infinito in -are. Recitavamo tempi e modi dell'amare latino. Era un dolciume obbligatorio per me indifferente alla pasticceria. Più di tutto mi irritava l'imperativo: ama.

The Scriptures, read and prayed, are our primary and normative access to God as He reveals Himself to us. The Scriptures are our listening post for learning the language of the soul, the ways God speaks to us; they also provide the vocabulary and grammar that are appropriate for us as we in our turn speak to God.

Growing up in the Boroughs, I thought I must be the cleverest boy in the world, an illusion that I was able to maintain until I got to the grammar school.