To boldly go… against the pedants: Fine, if you’re jargon-free
Mark Shea
is the College's manager of English language development
You’re probably familiar with the work of grammar pedants such as Lynne Truss’s Eats, Shoots and Leaves, Simon Heffer’s Strictly English: The Correct Way to Write… and Why it Matters (personally, I wouldn’t capitalise the ‘T’ there), the Bad Grammar Awards, and any number of articles in our broadsheets and tabloids.
Well, now the opposition are returning fire with a new anti-pedantry tome by Oliver Kamm, Accidence Will Happen. The book describes itself as “an authoritative and deeply reassuring guide to grammar, style and the linguistic conundrums we all face” and claims that many of the purists' prohibitions are bogus and can be cheerfully disregarded.
So where should the BBC stand in this debate? Right in the middle, obviously.
Although I think there are pragmatic reasons to adopt some of the arguments that pedants put forward, in terms of the historical development of language they are putting the cart before the horse.
I believe it’s self-evident that the language comes first and the rules come later. No super-being descended from the mountainside to give some grunting apes the first edition of Fowler’s Modern English Usage. Conventions to ease understanding develop, mutate and are abandoned over time.
And there is clearly a dimension of snobbery and class-based value judgement involved in the creation of rules (a whole new blog for another day).
However, in the interests of, erm, disinterest, let me say that I don’t find Kamm’s arguments entirely convincing either.
He seems to argue that a particular use of language must be correct because a famous author used it in that way. He takes a descriptive rather than prescriptive approach and believes that usage alone is sufficient for us to deem something correct.
But just because people do something doesn’t make it right, does it? I see some debatable language use as a little like speeding: we know it’s wrong but because everyone else is doing it we think it’s OK. Go too far (or rather too fast) and everyone thinks you’re an idiot, though.
And so to the practical stuff: some advice. While it may not really be appropriate to describe much of what pedants say are ‘rules’, there is a place for convention. Even Kamm agrees on the virtues of following an established pattern of language use.
“My advice to readers looking for guidance on usage is that when they follow conventions they are expressing a stylistic preference - comparable to the stipulations of the style guides that your newspaper and mine (the Times) issue to journalists. That's all. Their merit is consistency not correctness,” he says.
Consistency and conventions are clearly of practical value for the BBC. Our audiences expect a certain standard of English and will complain if we don’t meet it. The BBC might also play a role in language development (although far less than some believe, I think). So we have some responsibility to ensure that whatever we propagate is elegant, or at least not deliberately ugly.
With this in mind I’d like to reconsider some of the specific points Kamm (below) makes with my own personal advice - and occasional reference to the BBC News style guide. I’ll use a traffic light system: green = go ahead and use it; yellow = use judiciously - it will annoy pedants and they may have a point; red = do not use - this is breaking a useful convention.
Ain’t: yellow. Kamm might find this an acceptable contraction but this will be perceived by most audiences as slang, and may not be understood by audiences with English as a second language. Use only in appropriate contexts: spoken English and informal.
Because (at the start of a sentence): green. It’s fine for informal spoken and written use. I tend to agree with Kamm that it’s OK to begin a sentence with a conjunction - we certainly do with others such as but, if, unless etc. I suspect this opinion will irritate many readers, though.
Due to: green. Again, I agree with Kamm. Pedants may dislike it but this two-word prepositional phrase is routinely used to mean owing to, and has been for a long time. The BBC News style guide insists that you should use it only with a preceding noun - for example, ‘his exasperation was due to their inefficiency’, not ‘he was exasperated due to their efficiency’. I think that although it might originally have meant ‘caused by’ it is now so frequently used with the meaning ‘because of’ that both are acceptable.
Former/latter (to refer to numerous items): red. Here I disagree with Kamm and would recommend that we use these terms only when referring to pairs of items. He is happy to use them in lists too - for example, ‘I visited Belgium, Holland and France. In the former…’.
Hopefully (to mean ‘I hope’): yellow. Pedants and the BBC News style guide insist that hopefully should only be used to mean ‘with hope’, as in ‘he approached her hopefully’. However, I believe the vast majority of people use ‘hopefully’ in the sense of I hope: ‘Hopefully it won’t rain when we go to the beach.’ And I’m OK with that.
Irregardless: yellow. A significant proportion of our audience will abhor this - only use humorously as a portmanteau of regardless and irrespective.
Jargon: red. Kamm says it is legitimate to use jargon when addressing a specialist audience; our audiences are rarely specialist and the style guide insists we weed it out.
Myriad (meaning countless): green. This is absolutely fine - I don’t care if it used to mean specifically 10,000 any more than Oliver Kamm does.
None (with a plural verb): yellow. Like Kamm, I don’t have a problem with using this with a plural verb: ‘She had few friends and none of them were regular visitors.’ Our style guide recommends a singular verb there; I think it should be changed as the plural is more natural today.
Presently (to mean currently): yellow. I agree with Kamm that context should be enough to allow us to differentiate between this meaning and the alternative, ‘in a short while’, but since we have alternatives try to use currently/at present instead and leave presently to mean ‘in a short time’.
Question mark punctuation: yellow. I tend to agree with Kamm that questions needn’t always be followed by question marks. If a grammatical question is not intended as a question, I’d suggest that in direct speech we can use punctuation to give an idea of function - that is, ‘Will you please stop that now!’
Reason why: green. Sticklers insist this should be ‘the reason that’ because the word ‘reason’ implies ‘why’, thus making it redundant. But Kamm is right in saying there seem to be few objections to ‘the time when’ or ‘the man who’.
Split infinitive: green. No other point of grammar is so frequently cited as a solecism or mistake (are grammar pedants the only people who use the word solecism?) and ‘to boldly go’ is the most frequently cited example. I agree with Kamm. I don’t mind split infinitives at all and occasionally think they sound better. The BBC News style guide is also OK with them.
They (to refer to a single person): green. I’m with Kamm on this point and I feel quite strongly about it. To use ‘they’ in a non-gender-specific way - ‘if any student has accommodation problems they can get advice from our housing officer’ - seems a perfectly acceptable solution, and if anything more elegant than he/she. I don’t think the singular/plural issue is important in most cases, but as always make your decision based on context.
Using ‘who’ instead of ‘whom’: green. Kamm’s right again when he says: “Few people now use whom in speech: it sounds fussy and slows the sentence down.” We don’t maintain a distinction between subject and object pronouns when we use ‘which’, ‘what’ and ‘that’ as relative pronouns. ‘The person who I met there…’ sounds fine to me. The BBC News style guide maintains the distinction.
I gave it to yourself: red. Kamm says this construction is useful, but it sounds abhorrent to me. (Finally, he coaxes out my inner pedant.) I can’t disagree with his argument that by using ‘yourself’ and ‘yourselves’ you can distinguish between singular and plural objects in a way that you can’t with ‘you’, but I would still reserve this for reflexive use (where subject and object refer to the same person). But this doesn’t make me feel good about myself.
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Principles of good writing: Allan Little
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Blogs post about language and grammar by BBC News style editor Ian Jolly
