Three Grammar Rules You Can (And Should) Break
copyblogger.com
copyblogger.com
It is likely that "to boldly go" has a "ring to it" because the author has watched hundreds of episodes of Star Trek where the infinitive is split.
To my mind there is nothing inherent about, for instance, the phrase "Man and Wife" that gives it a special ring. Instead it is the ingrained convention of the firstness of men that makes the phrase sound "right."
I am not saying the author is wrong about split infinitives, but the example, "if it sounds good use it," isn't a very good one.
The money paragraph quoted below:
By all means, avoid using they with singular antecedents in your own writing and speaking if you feel you cannot bear it. Language Log is not here to tell you how to write or speak. But don't try to tell us that it's grammatically incorrect. Because when a construction is clearly present several times in Shakespeare's rightly admired plays and poems, and occurs in the carefully prepared published work of just about all major writers down the centuries, and is systematically present in the unreflecting conversational usage of just about everyone including Sean Lennon, then the claim that it is ungrammatical begins to look utterly unsustainable to us here at Language Log Plaza. This use of they isn't ungrammatical, it isn't a mistake, it's a feature of ordinary English syntax that for some reason attracts the ire of particularly puristic pusillanimous pontificators, and we don't buy what they're selling.
Then, someone decided that it was bad, and grammarians rejoiced, despite the awkward construct of he/she or it
An individual is free to do what (they, he, she, or one) wishes?
Should be: "fucking shit".
It is an archaism and Americanism and the reason it exists is nothing but technical limitations of printing presses. It screws up with language's goal -- to transfer information effectively.
To reach that goal, we must break any rules and evolve our language instead of religiously following whatever we were taught.
I see what you did there (i.e. using parentheses to denote parenthetical comments rather than matching commas, an incorrect grammatical construction I prefer).
"Parenthetical phrases have been used extensively in informal writing and stream of consciousness literature. Of particular note is the southern American author William Faulkner (see Absalom, Absalom! and the Quentin section of The Sound and the Fury) as well as poet E. E. Cummings. In most writing, overuse of parentheses is usually a sign of a badly structured text. A milder effect may be obtained by using a pair of commas as the delimiter. If the sentence contains commas for other purposes visual confusion may result."
This was the first thing that came to mind when reading that particular section. It's so true, and the points they make in that scene are good points indeed.
I think that's an underrated movie.
However, many languages including English have parts that don't fit. They are rules introduced by fiat. Someone at some point decided that because you can't split infinitives in Latin, you shouldn't do it in English. But our brains are not wired for that. You can just willy-nilly mix C++ and Python.
And here's where things get interesting, any native speaker will be fluent in the natural part of the language, but the rules introduced by fiat are often used to distinguish class and education.
Children learn language simply by listening, but more then that our brains will auto complete! That's how pidgin languages turn into creole languages.
This auto completion feature will lead children to naturally split infinitives in English. And equally naturally never split them if they are native speakers of Latin.
Not splinting infinitives has to be learned in a separate process - school, and relies on a different part of the brain - long term memory.
That's why it's used to show of class and education.
English is not unique in mixing natural and fiat rules. Japanese for example has parts which are natural and honorific constructs introduced by fiat.
People who left Japan as young children, can be fluent in Japanese and yet completely not know the honorific forms, which makes them sound very lacking even though they are fluent in Japanese.
But if you're fluent in both languages that kind of mixing just sounds soooo wrong!
That's why the critique of S&W the other day didn't make any sense. S&W is a book on style.
I think that sentence would sound nicer like this: Most of them have a good reason for being around. After all, clarity in communication is a good thing, a virtue even.
As for the rules, I think I read it in the King's English or perhaps in an essay by Bernard that rules are made to be broken, but you must know what they are so that you can break them, otherwise most likely you are wrong.