So now you know.
You know that choices about where to put commas often are not an exact science and that they leave plenty of room for your own judgment.
You know that “John and I” go to the park, but Sarah goes to the park with “John and me.”
You know that language rules are so forgiving that you can actually use the word “literally” to mean “figuratively.”
You know why The Simpsons is the most word-savvy show on television.
You know that James Kilpatrick, William Safire, Lynne Truss, and a whole bunch of other grammar sticklers could all use a good tickling (at the very least).
You know that, despite the seemingly straight lines of my clothed body, naked I’m the spitting image of Pamela Anderson.
You know how to jack up the next meanie who jumps on you for not using “whom.”
You know that all those people who want you to think your use of the language is sorely inadequate have been pulling a fast one all these years.
You know how to be right about most language issues most of the time.
That’s all great. But what if you need to do better than that? What about the times when it’s imperative that you cover your apostrophe?
Well, you could cruise to your local bookseller in search of help, but beware: The meanies are right there on the shelf, waiting to pounce. In fact, about half the language books you’ll find in the stores reveal a strange trend that’s a clear sign of snobbery. That is, these books go out of their way to identify their audience very clearly in their title or subtitle. Lapsing into a Comma, by Bill Walsh, begins its secondary title with A Curmudgeon’s Guide. Barry Tarshis segregates potential readers by titling his book Grammar for Smart People. Eugene H. Ehrlich takes elitism to new levels with his rudely titled book, The Highly Selective Dictionary for the Extraordinarily Literate. William F. Buckley Jr.’s The Lexicon carries the audience-specific subtitle A Cornucopia of Wonderful Words for the Inquisitive Word Lover. Robert Hartwell Fiske’s The Dictionary of Disagreeable English has the subtitle A Curmudgeon’s Compendium of Excruciatingly Correct Grammar.
(I must confess that I had the same goal in mind for this book when I pitched the subtitle Grammar Served with Lots of Sketches of a Nude Homer Simpson, but I got shot down. Lawyers! Michael Jackson, however, did offer to cover my legal bills if I included images of Bart.)
Eats, Shoots & Leaves takes the secondary title The Zero Tolerance Approach to Punctuation. Truss’s subtitle openly beckons the intolerant, setting the tone for the “sticklers unite” message they’ll find inside. Dig a little deeper into Eats, Shoots & Leaves and it becomes clear that Truss has no desire to reach out to the average Joe. “Don’t use commas like a stupid person,” she commands. That’s well and good for her exclusive clique of so-smart readers, but about us stupid people? Where can we turn?
Enter the second category of grammar and usage books on the shelves: The Complete Idiot’s Guide, English Grammar for Dummies, Painless Grammar, one that bills itself as a Grammarphobe’s Guide, one that specifies it’s for the Grammatically Challenged, and a host of texts that cozy up to us “morons” by making oh-so-charming mistakes in their own titles. These include Grammer in Plain English, which has a red slash through the first “e” and a handwritten “a” above. There’s also A Grammar Book for You and I with a slash through the “I” and the scribbled words, “Oops, Me!”
Golly, Bubba, I was dadgarmed afraid of these here grammar books but this one here really speaks to me.
The only thing left is to come right out and call a work The Author of This Book Is Your Superior in Every Way and You’re Not Smart Enough to Know He’s Talking Down to You.
So, while the “extraordinarily literate” and the “complete idiots” alike have plenty of titles to choose from, what about everybody in the middle? People who went to college, maybe studied a foreign language for a year or two, and demonstrated a decent aptitude for grasping language issues? Those who just want some practical advice without having to get a PhD in English or to wade through verbose musings on the apostrophe by some long-dead member of the House of Lords?
The reigning grammar snobs have no desire to help the majority of people who would like to use the language with greater confidence but who don’t want to dedicate their lives to the stuff. And we are the majority. Think about it. Who among us has not, while composing a Dear John letter, fretted over whether to hyphenate “chronic halitosis”? What red-blooded American guy hasn’t found himself at a frat party misusing the word “whom” in a vain attempt to score with a hot English major? Who can honestly say she has not, while composing a sonnet, wondered whether to put a comma between “here I sit” and “broken-hearted”?
Yet we’re the ugly masses that language experts would rather ignore. In their world, either you’re one of them or you’re someone they can look down on and patronize.
So I’m going to let you in on one of the biggest secrets of the language-savvy: In between those books that are alternately patronizing, impossible, and perverse, are books with the word “usage” in their titles: The New Fowler’s Modern English Usage, Garner’s Modern American Usage, Webster’s Dictionary of English Usage, Wilson Follett’s Modern American Usage, and others. These books are the one secret those grammar fat cats don’t want you to know because anyone who has one on his desk can handle almost any language situation. Unlike grammar books, which are laid out in the form of someone else’s lesson plan, these “usages”/“usage dictionaries” are written for our convenience—not the writer’s. And that means that, with one of these books, you can easily access information about exactly what you want to know.
Say, for example, you want to know about when to use “pore” versus “pour.” Just look under “p.”
“pore” (to read intently) is sometimes misspelled “pour” (to make [a liquid] flow downward). . . . This probably appears primarily because the verb “pore” appears less often in print.
How’s that for a book that’s speaking your language? These books are all structured with the same goal in mind: to put the answer to every language question you might have right at your fingertips.
For example, on the same page as “pore” Garner’s has an entry on “Pontius Pilate,” a primer on the difference between “populace” and “population,” and a very thorough discussion of possessives.
Want to know how to spell “vale of tears”? Look under “v.” Want to know the current rules on split infinitives? Look under “s.” Confused about the difference between “load” and “lode”? Turn to “l.” “Fused participles” are under “f.” “Danglers” are under “d.” And, under “g,” there’s a whole entry on the term “gilding the lily” (unfortunately, it’s not dirty). Grammar concepts, commonly confused words, tricky spellings, style issues, figures of speech, notable names—they’re all in there, alphabetized.
Neat, huh? These usage guides aren’t perfect—they contain some pretty glaring omissions and some clear cases of grammar snobbery. But having one on your desk can make the difference between being language-savvy and living in fear that you’re speaking and writing wrong. In other words, your days of cowering before the grammar snobs are over.
So now, as you go forth into the world, remember that your newfound language powers are to be used only for good—never to humiliate the weak but only to fight back against those who do. Your wisdom is for clubbing the curmudgeons and sticking it to the sticklers. Because, once stripped of their power to instill fear in others, grammar snobs are no longer great big meanies—just great big weenies.