|
Today’s email landed in two
quite distinct set of inboxes.
One group of inboxes belongs to
a group of (friendly, relaxed, good-spirited) people who thought, “Oh,
look, here’s another email from Harry.”
The second group of inboxes
belongs to a ferocious tribe who noticed, and were instantly enraged
by, the grammatical mistake contained in the phrase Between you and
I.
What is
the mistake? Ah well, though English doesn’t have a host of grammatical
cases – unlike German with 4, Russian with 6, and a surely unnecessary
7 in Polish – there is still a difference between the nominative case
(“he” or “I”) and the accusative case (“him” or “me”.) And prepositions
like their complement to be in the accusative. So I shouldn’t have
written between you and I. I should have written between you
and me.
Although plenty of
English-speakers don’t bristle at errors like that, you lot are
different. You’re a bunch of writers. You’re attuned to these issues
and mostly don’t make them in your own writing. I’m not sure I get
enraged by such errors any more, but I do certainly notice them. Every
time.
And, look, I think it’s still
safe to say that using a nominative pronoun after a preposition is an
error. But let’s just remember what that means. All we’re really saying
is that most language users still use the preposition + accusative
structure. Not to do so, places us – somewhat – as a non-standard user.
But for how much longer? The who
/ whom distinction (another nominative / accusative issue) has
largely vanished from our language. Or, to be more accurate, it’s just
started to get awkward. Take a look at these examples:
The agent, to whom the
manuscript was sent …
The agent, to who the manuscript
was sent …
The agent who the manuscript was
sent to
Do you
like any of them? The first is technically correct, if we’re being
old-school about it, but it does have a somewhat fussy flavour today.
The second option just sounds wrong. The third just sounds clumsy. So
mostly, today, we’d rewrite any of those options as The agent who
received the manuscript. By making the agent the subject again, we
can get rid of that correct-but-fusty to whom construction.
Another
example of a grammar which still exists, but patchily, is the which
/ that distinction. Technically, the word that introduces a clause
which defines the noun being described. Like this:
Manuscripts
which contain murders are always excellent.
That sentence wouldn’t be right
if you took out the “which contain murders” bit. Clearly, that sentence
is saying that the presence of murders in a manuscript is what
guarantees their excellence. In these, definitional-type clauses, you
always need a which.
Other times, it’s clear that a
clause is just adding information which could, in principle, be dropped
entirely:
Manuscripts, which authors have
slaved over, are wasted on agents.
That sentence is essentially
saying “manuscripts are wasted on agents”. You could drop the clause
about authors’ hard work and the essential meaning remains unchanged.
So OK, we know the difference
between which and that. Whether or not you knew the rule,
you probably don’t mess up in a really obvious way.
But, but, but …
A lot of rules look clear on the
pages of a grammar book but dissolve on contact with reality. Take a
look at these actual examples from my current work in progress:
Peter looks at me with that
soft-eyed affection which is the special preserve of older
uniformed officers contemplating their younger, bossier detective
colleagues.
I spark up. Inhale. Open the
window enough that I can blow smoke through the dark slot which leads outside.
I park down by the beach which, out of season, has an
abandoned quality. Windswept and forlorn.
The first of those examples is
clearly correct in terms of the grammar. The police sergeant’s
affectionate look is defined by the (sarcastic) clause that follows, so
I got that right.
The next one? Well, I don’t
really know. You could argue that the “which leads outside” is
definitional, but you could argue it the other way too. And I know for
a fact I wasn’t guided by grammar in making the choice there, but
sound. The sentence had just had a double th-sound (“through the“) and
it probably didn’t need another. So I went with which.
And the last example – the beach
one – is just wrong. There’s only one beach, so the clause which talks
about its abandoned quality can’t be defining it.
I’d be very surprised indeed if
a British copy-editor were to correct that mistake, however. We Brits
are just more relaxed on that specific issue. A good American
copy-editor probably would correct it, however. US copy-editing
standards are more demanding and more precise. (Another example? Brits
will often use a plural pronoun, they, to refer to a singular
noun, like the government. It's not that Americans never do
that, but they do it so little, it still strikes plenty of American
ears as simply wrong.)
But you know what? I still like
the way I wrote that sentence – with the “erroneous” which. It
just sounds better to me.
I also trash conventional
grammar all the time:
I use a lot of sentence
fragments.
I start sentences with
conjunctions.
I sometimes drop the subject
from verbs.
I use words that don’t exist.
I often do all that, back to
back, in one sweet jam of Offences Against Grammar. Here’s one
twenty-four-word excerpt that merrily commits enough crimes to send the
Grammar Police into a spin:
Clean shirt. A takeaway coffee.
I make tea. Fire up my computer.
Kick my shoes off, because my feet aren’t in a shoey mood.
So in
the end? Well, I suppose I still adhere to the kind of grammar rules
which remain largely unbroken, by most people, even in informal contexts.
So I wouldn’t say “between you and I” because that strikes my ear as
wrong. But I’m more than happy to shatter other rules (the sentence
fragment one, say) and bend others (the which/that distinction,
for example.)
And you don’t have to do as I do.
Your job is to find your own writing voice and tune that in a way that
suits you best. If that involves technically excellent grammar, then
great. If it doesn't, that's really fine too.
About once a month I get an
email from someone who frets that they don’t know enough formal grammar
to be a writer. And to hell with that. If it sounds right, it is right.
That’s all you really need to know.
Till soon.
Harry
|
No comments:
Post a Comment