I'm glad to hear I'm not the only closet language pedant.

Here's a few sentences to remember:

'You're never at your best until you're using your yaw control properly.'

'They're never going to accept they're using the word 'their' improperly until there are more teachers taking pride in their "theres".'

And here's a question for you: grey or gray?

And don't forget that mischievous second 'i' in Liaison. It's a nasty one.

I agree with almost all you have said. Have you noticed how many young people use 'portray' wrongly? But I disagree about your use of myriad. My dictionary, The New Imperial Refernce Dictionary (1952) says "Myriad, Noun, any immense number - adj numberless (Greek myrias, -ados ten thousand)." I can see why using it in the plural is wrong though.

I have had a huge response to my article on language pedantry since it appeared in The Australian last week. It confirms my view that many people do care about our beautiful language and don't want to see it decline. I should point out that I am not an authority, just someone who really loves English.
Thanks to both people who have commented so far on this forum. In reply to Enda, who queries my favouring "myriad": again, I am not a grammarian but it is my understanding that adjectives do not have plural forms and therefore it is not correct for myriad to take a plural "s" when it is being used as an adjective.
Thanks also to TurnLeftThenRight (aren't internet aliases fascinatiing - I wonder what this one means). You ask about grey/gray. I would be interested to hear from other (more qualified) people here, but certainly from my point of view as an Australian journalist, we would always use "grey" as it is accepted Australian style, whereas "gray" is accepted US style. It is more of a style issue than a matter of correctness.
More power to the pedants!
Liz

Liz,
Thank you for "up-staging" me, as I was in the process of writing a similar article.
My intention was to highlight the inability of many news readers, both on radio and TV, to interpret correctly the meaning of a writer's report, and communicate this to the audience.
They place the wrong stress within prepositional phrases during their reading of stories, the principle examples being "of", "from", "for" and "to".
I grow more firmly a fellow pedant when so-called professional users of English read a sentence such as:
".....firemen helped drag the victim FROM the building" or:
".....there's relief in sight FOR taxpayers".
A sad fact is that much of this linguistic inability is heard on the ABC, which really should be an standard setter for the correct delivery of English.
My scorn stems from years of directing actors and performers in delivering the meaning of scripts, yet my competence with English was only as a result of thorough schooling, and the challenge of language as an emotive art form.

It's not only newsreaders who are guilty of abusing the language - save some criticism for their subjects.

There are a number of politicians out there, who have designed a new sentence structure. Kim Beazley is one example, though there are plenty on both sides of the political fence using this tactic.

Simply put, they have rearranged the pause in the sentence. A normal person gets through a sentence, then pauses to take a breath - not so anymore.

These politicians are so keen to push their barrow, that the pause takes place halfway through a sentence. This way, they can finish the sentence with an "and just let me say this" before propelling themselves into a new diatribe without being cut off by the now baffled interviewer.

I have this irrational fear that one day they will find a way to breathe without taking in air through their throat... Perhaps gills, or perhaps they'll learn to breathe through the other end...
I'd better quash this line of thought before it leads to the obvious lowbrow politician-bashing.

P.S. Indeed, internet aliases are great. This one is a recommendation to experience a little of both sides of the political spectrum to achieve a certain balance, while acknowledging you'll probably end up one way or the other anyway... either that or it's directions to my house. I'm not really sure any more.

I agree with all of the above. In year 8, my Japanese teacher had to teach my grade what nouns and adjectives were before she felt she could properly teach us Japanese.

In year 10 I went to America on exchange, and felt completely overwhelmed by the grammar component of their English classes. I remember asking "What is a gerund? What's an appositive? What's a participial phrase?" They also had vocabulary lists they would learn every week- unlike most of the schools I've attended in Australia.

My goodness, if even the Americans can learn how to speak English properly, surely we can as well!

For what it's worth, the American Heritage Dictionary gives the following usage note for 'myriad':
Usage Note: Throughout most of its history in English myriad was used as a noun, as in a myriad of men. In the 19th century it began to be used in poetry as an adjective, as in myriad men. Both usages in English are acceptable, as in Samuel Taylor Coleridge's “Myriad myriads of lives.” This poetic, adjectival use became so well entrenched generally that many people came to consider it as the only correct use. In fact, both uses in English are parallel with those of the original ancient Greek. The Greek word mrias, from which myriad derives, could be used as either a noun or an adjective, but the noun mrias was used in general prose and in mathematics while the adjective mrias was used only in poetry.
[Sorry about the missing vowels in the Greek - they are u+macron in the original]

I am in sympathy with Liz's general thrust, but, as this example makes clear, arguments about specific points of English usage and grammar should be made with care, and relevant evidence has to be examined.

For another very nice example see http://itre.cis.upenn.edu/%7Emyl/languagelog/archives/003414.html
where Mark Liberman tests the advice that the passive voice is best avoided (whoops!) by looking at the actual practice of an acknowledged master of English prose, Winston Churchill.

I cdnuolt blveiee taht I cluod aulaclty uesdnatnrd waht I was rdanieg

The phaonmneal pweor of the hmuan mnid, aoccdrnig to a rscheearch at
Cmabrigde Uinervtisy, it deosn't mttaer in waht oredr the ltteers in a wrod are, the olny iprmoatnt tihng is taht the frist and lsat ltteer be in the rghit pclae. The rset can be a taotl mses and you can sitll raed it wouthit a porbelm. Tihs is bcuseae the huamn mnid deos not raed ervey lteter by istlef, but the wrod as a wlohe.

Amzanig huh? yaeh and I awlyas tghuhot slpeling was ipmorantt

Don't know whether to dissent or agree, however it does demonstrate how our language is evolving. Look back 200years and you may not understand much of what was written. Now the form of grammar, pronunciation and expletives is vastly different.

I used to write long grammatical lectures and essays, now I find myself rewriting then until they,
A. Fit into 350 words. B. those reading it have sufficient understanding of English language to understand what I write. C. Get my message across in the best way by using less colourful explicit language.

This may have something to do firstly with movies, then TV, video and now the internet. Now we see the colour of a story in front of us, not so much within words. People today use words to describe a happening, not the happening itself, we have moving pictures for that. Trying to work out what someone is saying when they get the spelling, context and meaning of the word wrong, is growing in our printed media. The internet and SMS texting, chat room language, is a prime example of the rapid changes in our language.

Language is no longer isolated demographically or culturally and English is becoming the norm for the world. Along with that, a new universal English is becoming prominent. It may not be long before we have a language people from 100 years ago would not understand, but the entire world will.

Are the pedant, just trying to hang onto the past, or just survive a lovely, colourful, yet outdated way of expressing. As long as the written un-pictured word is about, I hope we keep such a beautifully expressive written language and enjoy it.

PS, I did fail English at school, could never get the explanations right. Now I understand, it's all changing, back to the drawibng board, bugger.

I think that the decline in standards of the teaching in English has worsed the effect of both the English of buisness and political correctness.

It pains me greatly that studying English at school and studying everything apart from Latin and Logic at university that the standard of English is so poor. There are terrible phrases such as "life journey" (life), "life partner" (husband/wife), "truth value" (truthfulness?), all of which owe something to the English of buisness. I suppose that one could hyphenate such words, but the hyphen just eliminates a preposition. The problem, thus, with hyphenation is that one often doesn't know which preposition is being replaced. These terms abound in the New South Welsh HSC, where these compound nouns with little significance are used as 'concepts' through which great works of literature are bastardised.

Political correctness is also allowed to reign when you mix your roots. "Television? The word is half Greek, half Latin. No good can come of it - CP Scott." Similarly, destroying our lovely Anglo-Saxon words like alderman, chairman, spokesman, fireman, craftsmanship, for the sake of political correctness is permitted when adding latin suffixes to Anglo-Saxon nounds, such as chairperson, spokesperson, and (I heard this one last week from a mate doing Architecture) 'craftspersonship'. Surely, if we seek equality for women, and we seek them to be valued because they are women who can reach great heights, we should make sure that words such as chairwoman (a word older than 300 years) and spokeswoman can be used without a cringe. Of course, we must still defer to the masculine when there is doubt, but with only a week's teaching at year 7 level, we could easily explain why this is a necessity to students.

My concern with the removal of all the female ending -ess from words ending in -or and -er is that it implies that women have to become like men in order to gain equality. Rather, our society should focus on increasing the respect given to the -ess ending, rather than force women into being respect for denying something of their femininity. The effect, however, is greater in it makes the next generation feel like they have a right to change completely the rules of the language to suit their own wants, rather than acknowledging that it represents an objective standard of good parlance which we should preserve for generations to come.

I suppose studying Ancient Greek at high school has made me a pedant. I want to know why I can't say platypodes for the plural of platypus. We don't call doctors who work with feet "Pusesiatrists" or "Piiatrists", so why should our flat-footed monotremes be called platypodes?

Thanks Liz for a fascinating discussion.

The biggest language struggle for me is to “mitigate” (or is that militate?) against the inaccurate use of the word “mitigate” (or is that militate?)

While I agree that well-written English is a joy to read, I hesitate to join the bandwagon pronouncing the “decline of English” etc.

Throughout most of the 19th century, illiteracy was near-universal. Whatever writing remains to us from that period was written by a tiny proportion of the populace, from a narrowly-representative cross-section of their population.

As recently as the 1940s, the majority of Australian adults didn’t receive much education beyond elementary level, and the majority grew up under circumstances that modern classifications would describe as “functionally illiterate”. And again, whatever writing remains to us from the mid-20th century was written by a small proportion of the population, from a narrowly-representative cross-section of that population.

And as recently as 1970, 70% of Australians didn’t stay in school after Year 10. So most of the highly-credentialed managerial positions at that time were filled by people from, once again, a small and relatively privileged section of the populace - and the writing they produced is reflective of the rarefied circumstances in which many were educated.

Now, literacy of one standard or another, is near-universal. With more people writing more than ever before, from a wider diversity of backgrounds than ever before, how surprised or alarmed should we feel that there is a sharp divergence between the written language now and the written language then?

As for poor communication, I can find you any number of inconsistently-spelt, ambiguously-constructed, grammatically-questionable, poorly-written missives and memos from any century you care to mention. What does this prove, exactly?

Exhibit A: Doctors' writing. If this has declined, how could you tell?

Double plus good message :)

(-George Orwell on language engineering for those who don't get it).

There use to be a very informative programme on ABC radio that discussed in some detail the English language, its use and origins. I haven't heard it for years now but this article reminded me just how fascinating language can be.

But strict adherence to all of the rules and knowledge of objects like apositives and gerunds aren't really required for most of us mere mortals.

Thanks to everyone for a very interesting discussion. It has been extremely enlightening for me. I have learned about the noun form of "myriad" and I confess I never knew this before. "Linguist" is quite right to point out that one must be careful before venturing a prescriptive opinion on these matters without knowing all the background. I just think "myriad fish" sounds better, so I'll stick with the adjectival form. But the other option is there as well.

I have no argument with the idea of the language changing. There is no choice but to accept this. I am just insisting that the capacity of our language to convey meaning is retained. The capacity to inspire and to enchant are also nice things to have and I have found that forms of English that I consider degraded have little capacity for these things. There may well be a personal preference component in this - no doubt there is - but I believe that there is a wider importance as well.

I am glad that we are having this conversation and I hope it continues.
Liz

A man was in the river drowning. He shouted out "I am drowning and nobody may save me" OK the onlookers thought he is committing suicide, I will not put my life at risk to save him.

If he had said "I am drowning and nobody can save me" the onlookers may have thought, yes I can save him.

Confusion between can and may, might have killed this man. Words have very distict meanings.

Liz, I'm currently reading A S Byatt's "Still LIfe", such a joy to find such wonderful use of the English language. For most of my life, I expressed myself very precisely - without ambiguity unless I chose (e.g. for humour) to be ambiguous - and was amazed how often people misinterpreted my meaning, failed to accept the words used at their face value/correct interpretation but passed them through various filters, preconceptions, to understand something neither intended nor correct (I think I'm a bit less rigourous now). So more power to your "Pedant's Revolt".

Akshuns speek lowda dan werdz and if waching sumwun drown, specdators enjoi the vew and let thinkin and its eggstenshun, werdz, get in da way of wot needs to be dun, then l ges, that speeks for itself, if u will pardun da pun.

Personally l very much enjoy language, just for the pure artful and often whimsically creative use of it. But words are just words and they are very cheap in this world. In the face of all the lying, deceitful misrtepresentation that passes for communication, its no wounder that folks are loosing respect for language and falling back on listening to a persons actions instead of what they say.

Liz: Interesting article, and I think I agree with you a lot (including acknowledging that whilst my use of the language is not always perfect, it does annoy me when I see or hear bad English).

The only point relating to the article that I want to make is about architecture. I personally think a lot of what has been produced in architecture (actually, in our culture generally) in the past half century is pretty ugly and anything but magnificent. However, obviously a lot of people don't agree or we wouldn't see some pretty awful buildings. Federation Square in Melbourne, or the neo-Georgian (or whatever they're called) McMansions dotting our outer suburbs spring instantly to mind. Perhaps the greatest irony is the architecture department building at the University of Melbourne, which would make anyone re-consider unleashing anyone trained there on designing any building.

I also have a couple of other general points.

What I find interesting about pedantry is that (generally), if someone incorrectly stated a fact about geography or science, people wouldn't get upset if corrected. This isn't the case with language though. Why?

Also, is it any wonder that there are problems with language when people who should know better (for example, teachers, journalists and politicians) keep saying "bought" instead of "brought"? Unless we get incredibly elitist, it's difficult to stop the rot, so I think that (and many other examples) is a lost cause. However, it does seem that if so-called leaders can't set a good example then we've lost the plot. Furthermore, what's with the really strange way in which female newsreaders speak? Not only do they stress all the wrong parts of words or sentences, but they speak about three octaves lower than the average bass opera singer.

I always associate the inability to communicate clearly with the inability to think clearly.

When receiving a business document or proposal containing grammatical errors, I am frequently inclined to disregard the document and the person from whom it came. Grammatical errors reflect a lack of education and an inability to communicate effectively.

Yesterday I received a proposal from a leading Australian travel agency offering alternatives for an upcoming trip to the US and Europe. While I had several locations to visit and only one key date that could not be moved, the proposal was written in such a convoluted manner and was so difficult to fathom, that it was impossible to determine the various fares and the itinerary. I have completely lost confidence in this travel agent's ability to get me to my destinations with surety.

When will we realise that the most important thing which separates us from animals is COMMUNICATION? Lose our superior ability to communicate and we may well eventually become little better than .....well, animals!

We are animals.

Excellent points all round.

Writing well is a skill that takes years to refine and develop. So like any skill, there is an opportunity cost involved in developing it. Some people do not find writing well to be sufficiently rewarding to make it worth the years of effort required to become masterful writers.

Plumbing well is a skill that takes years to refine and develop. So like any skill, there is an opportunity cost involved in developing it. Some people do not find plumbing well to be sufficiently rewarding to them to make it worth the years of effort required to become master plumbers.

You get my point?

How many days, weeks, months, years have you spent sitting at your desk, honing the craft of putting words together? Why didn't you spend it learning how to kick goals, knit, hanglide or build a house?

By its very nature, OLO attracts (mostly) those whose writing skills are at the upper end of the normal distribution. By its very nature, OLO excludes those who have not developed their skills to the same degree.

So it's a bit rich for skilled writers to use a textual forum to dump on those less skilled in writing, as though writing is the most important skill to possess. Just like it's a bit rich for prize footballers to be dumping on those (such as myself) who have two left feet.

People choose to develop those skills which they find most rewarding. Perhaps there is no more mystery to it than that.

A contemporary of Liz, I had the benefit of lots of grammar in my education. This was enhanced by further study of Latin and other languages, and then a long stint as a teacher of English as a foreign language.

As an undergraduate in the mid-seventies, I remember hearing lecturers complaining that students were leaving school devoid of writing skills, and calling for remedial writing courses. They’re still doing it today, and I’m not convinced that writing skills have suffered because the English curriculum changed.

However I believe that there has been a shift in the types of skills people bring to their writing today, and I suspect that people who bemoan a lack of formal accuracy are unable to see what has replaced it.

In my view, younger writers concentrate more on the communication, rather than accuracy in their writing. They’ve been taught the importance of a coherent beginning, middle and an end, rather than piling together a set of finite sentences. They’ve also been taught that the context of a piece of writing is just as important as its structure, so we see young writers skilfully moving between email, text messages, online chat and formal writing.

In short, they’ve been equipped to provide quick effective communication in a range of contexts, but sometimes it’s not very elegant.

My answer to those who complain about the inelegance is, get over it. Read a few kids’ blogs – there are many great examples of vibrant and communicative use of English, and the rough edges only add to the charm. In addition, many are powerful examples of kids using writing as a platform for reflection.

There will always be some who use the language gracefully, and we will continue to value them. However for most of us language is a tool, not a decoration, and in my experience young people are being taught to use that tool appropriately.

trade: Speak for yourself! I am not an animal, I am a human being!

Bruce: I agree with you, though I could be pedantic and say that I might be able to think clearly, yet not be able to communicate it to someone in a foreign language. It could possibly even be the same with speakers of the same language, though I think you're probably right and I always get very suspicious of any company that can't get its point across very clearly to me, or even when I see or hear some meathead sportsman who can barely string three words together or who chews his words. Dipper and Gary Lyon spring instantly to mind. Maybe they just speak strangely. Actually, now that I think about it, I kind of make the same associations with people with particular accents (especially a lot of regional or Cockney accents in Britain, or with southern U.S. accents). I figure there's a problem if a native speaker can't or won't pronounce half the letters of the alphabet correctly (eg. throttle as fro-oow.)

Mercurius: I think you're probably right about writing to a fair degree (especially if people don't have need to write very much, though it could become a problem if someone had to deal with legal or financial documents), but I'm not so sure about the spoken word (not that you mentioned that) since it underpins so many other things.

Shorbe, I feel that the ugliness of modern architecture is as nothing compared to the ugliness of modern architectural writing. Take ths random example from Architecture Australia, 2005:

"throughout this process, the architects’ virtuosity is expressed not as wilful insistence (aka “conviction” and regretful compromise), but as a persistent manipulation that oscillates between yielding and affirmation."

Of course it is not just architecture writing that pursues this style of indigestible sub-Foucaultian (Foucauldian?) waffle; most contemporary art criticism is similarly vacuous cant dressed up with meaningful references to discourse, text, paradigm etc etc. Of course, given the propensity of such publications to publish tiny grey text on black backgrounds means that (fortunately) you can't read it anyway.

For more of this go to the Postmodernism Generator http://www.elsewhere.org/pomo . Every time you visit this site it generates a new meaningless postmodern essay, My wife and I laughed ourselves silly every time we reloaded the page.

I remeber complaining to a magazine designer years ago about the atrocious quality of the writing. "THE TEXT!!" he exclaimed, "nobody reads THE TEXT, it is just there to fill up the space between the pictures"....

"...through which great works of literature are bastardised."

Beautifully put.

Yes, it is true that language is "evolving" and I'm sure the ability to SMS/blog/email will become more and more important in the future.

However, I think it is just as important to be able to read the great works of literature and understand what they are actually saying. It's like talking to Grandpa. You might not want to use his language day to day, but you want to be able to understand it enough that you can actually learn something from him.

Literature is such a powerful way of teaching history. Remember, we must learn from history in order to not repeat it.

I remember one high school I attended that would study literary works in English of the same period/culture that was being studied in history. They worked beautifully together.

Also, this is hilarious. http://www.theonion.com/content/node/52061 "Girl Moved To Tears By Of Mice And Men Cliffs Notes"

P.S. I apologise for my poor grammar and the random structure of my ideas in this post :)

The transformation of language can cut both ways.

There is of course, the degradation that takes place over time - the use of simplified language in text messages and blogs, and the general laziness of some writers.

But on the other hand, there are certain groups out there who seek to obfuscate - whether they are making their profession seem more specialised than it really is or simply want to sound pompous, they are often guilty of making the language a complex ordeal.

Take legalese for example. How often are fairly simple findings made much more complex than necessary?

Or certain areas of academia. Sentences can become these horribly tangled pieces of jargon with little purpose except to befuddle, confuse and occasionally enrage.

These perpetrators are just as guilty as the lazy ones, but they're doing it with intent. Beautiful prose isn't necessarily complex - I would argue that excessive complexity actually gets in the way.

Svete Mdodan

Bhilsult

Ktieh Klnlneey