On Grammar
I have friends who believe that grammar is handed down from on high, either by Safire, or Strunk and White, or some are strange adherents of something they call ‘Chicago.’ One of them even argues that the rules of grammar are no subject to evolution. Which is odd, given that we’re speaking really bad French, with some German thrown in. French is just a degenerate form of Latin with a funny bureaucracy claiming it achieved perfection sometime around the time of some Sun King or other.
One of the `rules’ they like to push is this whole ‘he/she’ thing, claiming that it’s bad grammar to use they with singular antecedents. Each and every one of them, they’re wrong:
There’s not a man I meet but doth salute me
As if I were their well-acquainted friend
(A Comedy of Errors, Act IV, Scene 3, via Language Logs’s “Shakespeare used they with singular antecedents so there.”) One thing I find interesting about the two examples he uses is that in each of example, there’s a crowd of singular antecedents. Clearly, each man is separately saluting Antipholus, but it seems somehow relevant that there are many who do it. The programmer in me sees this as a foreach statement: Foreach x, do this and that themselves, then move to the next x.
This seems a little different than the use of they to avoid he/she. I’ll cite it anyway.
Ha! As a practical example, the style of ‘their’ to refer to the singular is correct in spoken A/NZ english. It is acceptable in written english, although probably frowned upon.
For those of us perverse enough to prefer Chicago style the online CMoS FAQ provides quite a bit of ammo against prescriptivists and other crypto-Grammarian Fascists (who’ll be first against the wall when the revolution comes). They’ve got a nicely pragmatic approach to most questions, for example their programmer-friendly stance on the serial comma. The sheer bloody-mindedness of “That’s why we have arbitrary styling rules—we treat everyone the same way and we don’t have to pause and think about it each time.” is appealing to me.
So, I’m curious: Why do you prefer Chicago style? My general approach is start with Strunk and White, and when I find myself reaching for the Economist Style Guide, rewrite until I don’t need it. (I believe this is also Safire’s rule on ‘whom.’)
I pick and choose, selecting the reputable resource that minimizes restructuring and awkward forcing of phrases. One reason I’m partial to Chicago is that it stems from a philosophy that grammar is a subset of rhetoric. (E.g. the serial comma explanation justifying itself in the spoken cadence of a phrase.)
The appropriate answer to questions of expert reference can only be offered after having answered the question “why insist on grammatical excellence?”.
I thought English was really bad German with French thrown in. That’s certainly the impression one gains from reading Chaucer, but no one cares if their meaning is understood by their readers.