I used to be the most insufferable spelling and grammar stickler. What linguists call a "prescriptivist." Any time you forgot to capitalize a sentence, or left out a comma, I would let you know. There was a point in which my dream job was to be a copy editor, just so I could correct other people's grammar. I didn't really know why I was doing this: some sort of weird allegiance to rules?
I used to be the most insufferable spelling and grammar stickler.
I don't do that anymore, and this blog post is the story of why.
Eats, Shoots & Leaves
There was this book that I read around this time, called Eats, Shoots & Leaves: The Zero Tolerance Approach to Punctuation. The title comes from a story about a panda who walks into a cafe, orders a sandwich, fires a gun into the air, and then leaves. In response to the puzzled waiter, the panda opens a wildlife manual and points to the entry for panda, which claims that the panda "Eats, shoots and leaves."
This is, of course, a joke. But the point the book makes is that punctuation (in this case, the comma between eats and shoots) is critical to understanding the meaning of a sentence. Which is a bit too extreme. Everyone knows what "Eats, shoots and leaves" is supposed to mean!
The point the book makes is that punctuation is critical to understanding the meaning of a sentence. Which is a bit too extreme.
The Jameson Telegram
Not to say there aren't ambiguous sentences every once in awhile. Eats, Shoots & Leaves provides an example of this telegram sent in 1896 to Leander Starr Jameson, a Scottish politician, before the Jameson Raid:
"It is under these circumstances that we feel constrained to call upon you to come to our aid should a disturbance arise here the circumstances are so extreme that we cannot but believe that you and the men under you will not fail to come to the rescue of people who are so situated."
Clearly there's a period missing somewhere. If you put it after here, it looks like this:
"It is under these circumstances that we feel constrained to call upon you to come to our aid should a disturbance arise here. The circumstances are so extreme that we cannot but believe that you and the men under you will not fail to come to the rescue of people who are so situated."
This is saying something like, "It looks like we might have a problem soon, but no action required yet."
However, the message appeared in the newspaper with a period after aid instead:
"It is under these circumstances that we feel constrained to call upon you to come to our aid. Should a disturbance arise here, the circumstances are so extreme that we cannot but believe that you and the men under you will not fail to come to the rescue of people who are so situated."
Which is rather more dire. After seeing this message, Jameson arrived anyway, totally unwanted, leading to a bit of a disaster. Here, correct punctuation would have been extremely important!
Taking It...Too Far
However, Eats, Shoots & Leaves makes everything like this telegram, spending a lot of time getting annoyed about apostrophes and commas, periods and semicolons. I don't want to dismiss the book–it's rather entertaining, and provides some interesting historical context. But, well, it often goes too far.
Here's how the introduction to Eats, Shoots & Leaves begins:
"Either this will ring bells for you, or it won't. A printed banner has appeared on the concourse of a petrol station near to where I live. 'Come inside,' it says, 'for CD's, VIDEO's, DVD's, and BOOK's." (The book was published in 2003.)
"If this satanic sprinkling of redundant apostrophes causes no little gasp of horror or quickening of the pulse, you should probably put down this book at once." –Lynne Truss, Eats, Shoots & Leaves
"If this satanic sprinkling of redundant apostrophes causes no little gasp of horror or quickening of the pulse, you should probably put down this book at once. By all means congratulate yourself that you are not a pedant or even a stickler; that you are happily equipped to live in a world of plummeting punctuation standards; but don't bother to go any further. For any true stickler, you see, the sight of the plural word 'BOOK's' with an apostrophe in it will trigger a ghastly private emotional process similar to the stages of bereavement, though greatly accelerated. First there is shock. Within seconds, shock gives way to disbelief, disbelief to pain, and pain to anger. Finally (and this is where the analogy breaks down), anger gives way to a righteous urge to perpetrate an act of criminal damage with the aid of a permanent marker."
Again: it's a joke...but it's not really a joke. Who cares whether videos is written VIDEO's? You know exactly what is meant.
And the worst part is, I was like this. Constantly missing the forest for the trees, because that's what correcting grammar is: not being willing to look at the broader context of a message, sort of pretending you don't understand when you do. And of course, signaling that you are the type of person who understands punctuation.
How To Persuade People of Things
This argument is not the reason I stopped correcting people's grammar.
It was seeing this xkcd.
This comic doesn't go through the argument I just went through. It doesn't really make the case against grammar policing at all.
What it really does is rather genius.
It connects something I had a positive opinion of (grammar policing) to something I had a negative opinion of (fashion policing). Because fashion is arbitrary! What looks good to one person is ugly to something else. And once this comic gave me permission to believe grammar was flexible, like fashion, my walls came tumbling down.
Once this comic gave me permission to believe grammar was flexible, like fashion, my walls came tumbling down.
(Actually, I'm not sure, but I think the first time I saw this comic, on my quest to go through the entire xkcd archive (technically worked, but sometimes I hit the random button and have no memory of seeing the comic before, so...), I didn't really process it. But the second time, it definitely sunk in.)
People are really good at confirmation bias, coming up with arguments for things we already support.* The important thing is to give yourself social permission to change you mind. And that's what this xkcd comic did.
Interestingly, Lynne Truss, the author of Eats, Shoots & Leaves, also wrote a book called Talk to the Hand, about manners. I kind of knew she wrote this, but I disliked the idea of manners about as much as the idea of fashion policing at that time, so it might have had a similar effect if it sunk in. She even makes the analogy to manners in the book. Anyway.
And So I Stopped Correcting People's Grammar
I was then on a path to descriptivism. I'm sure I occasionally mocked people's spelling and grammar, but for the most part, I succeeded. I even made an effort to text in a more casual way. At the time, I would always start sentences with capital letters; I tried lowercasing them. I previously put a period at the end of very sentence; I tried dropping it.
And some of these changes, I'm now trying to revert. Sometimes starting with a lowercase letter is important to convey the proper tone, but most of the time, an uppercase letter is just a bit more respectable. There's a middle ground: you can make sure that your own sentences are crisp, clear, and polished; and still look past it when other people make minor mistakes.
The #1 purpose of language is communication.
Really, it all comes down to this: the #1 purpose of language is communication.
–beautifulthorns
*I actually read a really great book about this recently: The Scout Mindset by Julia Galef. It's about how to avoid "soldier mindset," where every discussion is an argument, and your goal to win, and get into "scout mindset," where every discussion is a chance to get new information, and form a more accurate map of the territory. Fantabulous book. I finished it less than a day after starting, which I don't do anymore. I have to talk about The Scout Mindset in depth sometime.