A new book arrived in the post on Friday. It consists of reprints of articles from the first thirty years of Verbatim: The Language Quarterly. On Saturday, I finally got to crack it open, and read this:
When someone starts complaining to me about grammar, I listen intently. Not so much because I am entranced by yet another rant about the declining grammaticality of speaking and writing today, but because I am sure to hear an error in the speech of the ranter. It’s almost inevitable. English is a slippery divil; the rules are lagging far behind the caravan, and the inmates are not only running the asylum, they’re instituting managed care and turning a stupendous profit. English is messy, uninhibited, sprawling, and sloppy. That’s what I like about it. It’s a miracle when a good stylist can take the unmangeable tangle that is our language and craft a sparkling , coherent, evocative sentence out of it. In Verbatim, we believe that good writers are good writers nnot because of the rules of English, but in spite of them.
[Erin McKean. 2001. Verbatim: From the Bawdy to the Sublime, the Best Writing on Language for Word Lovers, Grammar Mavens, and Armchair Linguists, p.1.]
Lovely. It makes a good companion piece to Hall’s Leave Your Language Alone! which I have been re-reading recently. I do so love the intersection of humor and lingusitics.
Posted by jim at November 7, 2004 07:41 AMpretty sparkling.
Posted by: etaoin on November 7, 2004 09:49 AMThere error was mine and not McKean's. I just need to proof my entries better. I've fixed it.
Posted by: jim on November 7, 2004 10:01 AMah! I thought perhaps that was the humor part. :¬ )
Posted by: etaoin on November 7, 2004 12:14 PM