John Sutherland - How Good Is Your Grammar?: (Probably Better Than You Think)

Praise for John Sutherland

Sutherland, as always, wears his erudition
lightly, and his love of the quirky and off-beat
shines warmly through.
Susan Elkin, Independent on Sunday

John Sutherland is among the handful of
critics whose every book I must have. Hes
sharp-eyed and sharp-tongued, with a
generous heart and a wise head.
Jay Parini, author of Why Poetry Matters

Sutherland is English literatures most
distinguished librarian; erudite, perspicacious
and warm-hearted.
Jonathan Barnes, Times Literary Supplement

Sutherland puts humanity and the human,
logic and curiosity, back into criticism. He
makes the humanities humane again.
Professor Valentine Cunningham

John Sutherland is the sharpest and
wittiest of literary commentators.
Claire Tomalin

HOW GOOD
IS YOUR
GRAMMAR?

For Randolph Quirk

Everyone who lives by the pen should have a grammar guide as well as a dictionary always within reach. The helpmate I would recommend is The Oxford Modern English Grammar by Bas Aarts; a distillation of UCL/ SEU thinking and practice. Much of what is discussed here (Mr Goves views on grammar, for example) is dealt with, wittily and as quick response in Professor Aartss blog, Grammarianism.

Grammar Nerds, as they call themselves, are a sharing community. As is evident, I have gratefully borrowed from their blogged wit, wisdom and occasional crankiness. More details are in the Further Reading section. I thank Bas Aarts for looking over what Ive written and Paul Bougourd for his tactfully expert editorial supervision. Errors and other objectionable things are wholly mine.

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Keep it Simple.

Dying words of Bill W, Founder of AA

I am almost sure by witness of my ear, but cannot be positive, for I know grammar by ear only, not by note, not by the rules. A generation ago I knew the rules knew them by heart, word for word, though not their meanings and I still know one of them: the one which says but never mind, it will come back to me presently.

The Autobiography of Mark Twain, 1924

I couldnt possibly have sex with someone with such a slender grasp on grammar.

Russell Brand

I had my early education at a grammar school (founded, as we were daily reminded, in the reign of Henry VIII). So did Shakespeare. I like to think of that shared heritage between me and the Bard whenever I reflect on how those Etonians, whose alma mater teaches much more important things in life than grammar, are taking over the world.

The Germans call their equivalent institutions gymnasiums, the French, lyces (from the Latin lyceum, a hall for lectures). These names tell us a lot about those countries. As does the epithet grammar about ours. And unloveliest word comprehensivisation. The abolition of the grammar school, in the 1960s, and with it the eleven plus, has coincided with a general relaxation of the nations care about grammatical correctness. Decline or linguistic democracy?

One of our political parties (the one most pervaded with Etonism, as it happens) has pledged to bring back the grammar. Tory grammarians see good English as no less necessary a defence of the nation than Trident submarines. Their hearts warm at the mention of the title of the Fowler brothers book The Kings English (1906), and Kingsley Amiss homagetreatise of the same name (1997). Flying the same banner is zero tolerant Lynne Truss with her delightful defence of punctuational rectitude, Eats, Shoots & Leaves.

Opposing them are the grammatical sans-culottes rebels, anarchists and Guardian readers all who see even the extreme alternative (so-called wankers grammar) as a refreshing non serviam (or up yours!, as the wanker would say). Grammar is, nowadays, hot politics.

Im no linguist, although for several years I headed a distinguished department of Language and Literature. It was that way round. Language precedes use of language.

It was, for me, a happy neighbourhood. I liked the common sense that my language colleagues brought to bear on that human skill which, above all else, makes us human our way with words, and their ways with us.

The Survey of English Usage, founded by Randolph It is crystalline in its clarity and avoidance of jargon but entirely without prescription or moral judgment (i.e. good grammar versus bad grammar). There are only two imperatives it implicitly enjoins. That the language we use should make sense, and that the sense made should be appropriate to the situation. Thats it. Oh, and it helps a bit if you know how it works.

Situation is the more interesting to me. I love the way grammar flows like liquid to adapt to its situation, as it does, pre-eminently, in poetry. Or it can be clunkily pedantic, as in legal discourse (e.g. Grouchos party of the first party shall hereafter be known as the party of the first party...). The poets discourse reveres the richness of ambiguity and the erotics of vague. The lawyers discourse labours to disambiguate.

What follows is not a grammar rule book nor what used to be called a primer. It is a set of ruminations by someone who has worked with words and who, like M. Jourdain with his prose, has discovered he has been using grammar all his life more or less right(ly). And who relishes its curiosities.

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Each of the following 25 questions revolves around a grammatical error: real, alleged, disputable or simply fun to think about. Answers are at the end of the section. Keep your score.