The Truth About Grammar

Unlike The Truth About Grammar’s mock rage (or raging mockery), Roy Peter Clark’s The Glamour of Grammar takes a witty, sometimes humorous, approach to teaching us what we have forgotten or never learned about “practical English.” Clark crams fifty essays into approximately 260 pages in an attempt to cover the gamut of grammar including words, punctuation, meaning, and standards. I would have liked less discussion about etymology (on which Mr. Clark could dedicate an entire book or three) and more about rules of composition, but I understand that part of grammar’s magic depends on knowledge of words’ evolutions.

Some essays are quite short (fewer than two complete pages) as if Mr. Clark ran out of time, energy, or space to further develop the cogitation. Most essays are illustrated with an example from his own or another’s writing. A few bulleted points (what the author calls keepsakes) hang at the end of each essay but seem like something a C-average business student would add to the end of a PowerPoint presentation in order to cram in as much information as possible whilst mumbling to himself, “Good enough.” Edward Tufte be damned.

I agree with most of his advice. A user of bad grammar is an ineffective community member–but! if the rules can be broken in a creative or whimsical fashion without muddling the message . . . . A community depends on effective communication; effective communication depends on common language; and understanding that language requires all participants play by the same rules.

I disagree with other recommendations: Page 182 keepsake: “Do not be afraid to . . . end a sentence with a preposition.” No, no, no! Nicht gut! “Where are you going to?” And I ask, “To what? To dance, to live, to pitch the tent?” Do not keep this for the sake of my sanity!

On one subject dear to me he disappoints. Essay 16, “Let your ear help govern the possessive apostrophe,” restates the simple applicable rules but doesn’t mention the growing tendency of adding an apostrophe when pluralising nouns that end in vowels (e.g., example’s). I need all the help I can get to admonish offenders, Mr. Clark.

I appreciate Mr. Clark’s take on social networking sites and tools and their impact on grammar. He optimistically views Twitter as having its own grammar and filled with potential for new forms of creativity and expression. Not everyone, he cautions, will get it or accept it. I believe new technology has always presented a challenge to the proper grammar of the time (think telegrams and instant messaging) but our language seems able to absorb and flourish with the new grammar in part by imposing the old rules on the new techniques and allowing some new conventions to take hold (such as the use of foreign words in formal and informal writing).

Here are a few essay titles from each chapter to give you an idea of what tools are in this box: “Take a class on how to cross-dress the parts of speech,” “Enjoy, rather than fear, words that sound alike,” “Let your ear help govern the possessive apostrophe,” “Reclaim the exclamation point,” “Learn to lie or lay, as well as the principles behind the distinction,” “Show what is literal and what is figurative,” “Switch tenses, but only for strategic reasons,” “Learn the five forms of well-crafted sentences,” “Unleash your associative imagination,” and “Harness the power of particularity.”

The Glamour of Grammar has fierce competition: in the last thirty days, six English grammar and writing books have been released, according to Amazon.com. This book will have a place on my reference shelf, and I’ll use it for informal writing but not in my work as a technical writer/editor. I have not yet found any spelling errors, though I did see some questionable punctuation that I must investigate in more detail (i.e., it could be a style issue). I thank Mr. Clark for teaching me the origin of “boycott” (page 43), and I think I’ve finally learned the distinctions between lie and lay (Essay 23).

[The publisher provided me a free copy of The Glamour of Grammar for review.]