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I don’t think it would be tooting my own horn to call myself the Style Queen of the Free Press newsroom. When people have questions about italicization, Oxford commas (get thee behind me, Satan!) or misplaced modifiers, they usually come to me.
My own writing is far from perfect, but I’m pretty good at picking up other people’s flaws (a no-doubt endearing trait).
A fellow grammar nerd, former Free Press books editor Morley Walker is familiar with my reputation and taught me many things in his time at the paper, so it was no surprise that he knew I’d enjoy Rebel With a Clause: Tales and Tips From a Roving Grammarian by Ellen Jovin.
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Not only is it a breezy and irreverent little book, but it helped me put words to why I know things are wrong. I’m mostly an instinctual grammarian; I can identify nouns and verbs and (mostly) adverbs, but I have never diagrammed a sentence.
In the book, Jovin tries to travel to all 50 U.S. states (COVID halts her progress) with her Grammar Table — simply a folding table laden with various reference books that she sets up in parks or near libraries or other places with high foot traffic. There she sits for a day, entertaining questions from passersby on such topics as commas, adverbs and less vs. fewer.
It’s interesting how many people have strongly held convictions about such things. A particularly amusing example is Jason, 23, who expounds on how it’s lazy to abbreviate in texts, and tells her he includes commas and apostrophes in his thumbed missives.
“He was wearing a black leather jacket, was clearly drunk (it was noon) and was standing in a cloud of his own cigarette smoke,” Jovin writes.
And while I am far more rigid in my adherence to certain rules than Jovin — I have to follow Canadian Press Style when editing for the newspaper and I strive for clarity — I appreciate her take on the evolution of language.
“There is no reason to privilege your memory of what you think your teacher told you in, say, 1981, over adult discussions well into the 21st century,” she says.
In short, split those infinitives!
What are some grammatical concepts you feel passionate about? Or rather, about which you feel passionate?
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