June Casagrande - Mortal Syntax: 101 Language Choices That Will Get You Clobbered by the Grammar Snobs--Even If You’re Right

American English remains vibrant and effective precisely because were skeptical of authorities.

D ENNIS B ARON

It is a virtue to attend to what others are trying to say, instead of seizing gleefully on their inadvertences and shrieking, Gotcha!

B ARBARA W ALLRAFF

Beware of the man who works hard to learn something, learns it, and finds himself no wiser than before.

K URT V ONNEGUT

The Princess and the Peeved: A Fairly Telling Fairy Tale

O nce upon a time, a beautiful princess began writing a grammar column.

The column was titled A Word, Please. It was not titled Every Curmudgeons Long-Awaited Opportunity to Rant Like a Lunatic About Other Peoples Grammar Mistakes. It was not titled A Public Address to the Mentally Unstable as They Prepare to Set Out on Punctuation-Related Killing Sprees. And it surely was not titled Please Find Errors in This Column, Then Write to Tell Me Youre Smarter Than Me.

Yet rant they did. Find errors they did. Write to her about them they did (and will again as soon as they see that she wrote smarter than me instead of smarter than Ian issue covered quite regally in chapter 57 of this book).

And their e-mails inspired a book. And the book was titled Grammar Snobs Are Great Big Meanies . It was not titled Everyone Who Has Ever Corrected Anyone Elses Grammar Must Therefore Be a Snob . It was not titled Be Ashamed That You Know How to Use Whom. And it certainly was not titled Please Find Errors in This Book and Publish Them in Your Snooty Boston Globe Column .

Yet worry some did. Misinterpret some did. Publicly de-pants our beautiful princess some did.

So our princess realized she had more work to do.

First, she realized that people still had many more questions about grammar snobbery. Some wanted to know, Does wincing when I hear nuclear pronounced nu-cu-lar make me a grammar snob? Others wanted to know, Seriously, whats wrong with those psychos who jump on me for saying a myriad of before they even open their dictionaries to make sure theyre right? (The answers to these questions are no and adult diaper rash, respectively.)

The second thing our beautiful princess realized is that she must scour all her old e-mails, all her grammar books, and even the Internet to compile a list of the language issues creating the most confusion for nice people and thereby creating fodder for the grammar snobs.

And finally, she realized she must write another book compiling 101 of these most commonly attacked usagesa book with lots more errors in it to keep certain smug columnists and other humorless types chained to their keyboards and thus off the streets.

This is that book.

Each short chapter is dedicated to a single language issuein the form of a single sentencethat can incite a grammar snob to verbal violence.

Indeed, most of these issues our princess culled from her brushes with and study of real-life grammar snobsbe they readers of her column, authors of books, or denizens of that bottomless reservoir of grammar griping: the Internet. And in braving this frightening terrain, our princess confirmed a horrifying truth: that her subjects syntax need not be mistaken to be chided. Indeed, oftentimes when some poor speaker or writer is being attacked, it is the attackernot the attackeewho is wrong. Which leads us to the single most important truth about grammar snobs: Though they claim to be champions of the language, in truth many care more about criticizing others than about getting their facts straight.

Thus, each chapter has at its beginning an at-a-glance reference: This Usage Is Here our princess explains whether the construction in question is right, wrong, so wrong, not cut-and-dried, embarrassing, very unwise, risky, rock solid, etc. These chapter toppers will allow readers to see whether a usage is acceptable without having to first wade through long stories about the princesss cats and her frequent Vegas junkets.

It is important to note that the opinions she offers here are not her own (barring the occasional jab at certain wicked witches of the grammar world and Fox News). Our lovely princess has no desire to make the rules. There are enough jesters doing that already. Our princess instead has based each ruling on the consensus of her merry court of fourteen advisors. They are: The Chicago Manual of Style; The Associated Press Stylebook; Garners Modern American Usage; Fowlers Modern English Usage; Strunk and Whites The Elements of Style; The Oxford English Grammar; Websters New World College Dictionary; The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition; Lapsing into a Comma; The Elephants of Style; The Careful Writer; Usage and Abusage; Barbara Wallraffs Word Court; and The Dictionary of Disagreeable English .