Founding Grammars (37 page)

Although MacDonald has the usual technical quibbles with the dictionary—too many major authors dropped in favor of people like Ethel Merman and the omission of encyclopedia-type material—his overarching complaint is that Gove and his staff have let the facts of American usage influence the content of entries. The problem with “the permissive approach,” as MacDonald sees it, is that erroneous usages are treated as acceptable if enough people say them. The editors give one meaning of
nauseous
as “experiencing nausea,” although rightly the word means “causing nausea.” They allow
biweekly
to mean both “every two weeks” and “semiweekly” when only the first definition is correct. They accept
deprecate
and
depreciate
as synonyms. MacDonald believes that this failure to pass judgment on meanings that have traditionally been considered wrong lets the dictionary user down. “If he prefers to use
deprecate
and
depreciate
interchangeably, no dictionary can prevent him,” says MacDonald, “but at least he should be warned.”
23

MacDonald takes the same view as Richard Grant White. “Deciding what is correct,” he argues, “is more a matter of a feeling for language … than of the [usage] statistics on which Dr. Gove and his colleagues seem to have chiefly relied.… If nine-tenths of the citizens of the United States, including a recent President, were to use
inviduous,
the one-tenth who clung to
invidious
would still be right.”
24
He might as well have said, as White did, “There is a misuse of words which can be justified … by no usage, however general.”

Several months after MacDonald's review appeared, James Sledd, a professor of English and a notable defender of the dictionary, refuted MacDonald's charges in a conference paper presented at an American Ethnological Society meeting. In it he argues forcefully that MacDonald is ignorant of the nature of structural linguistics, does not understand how lexicographers traditionally work, and—most remarkable of all—is unfamiliar with the contents of
Webster's Second.

Sledd notes that a number of the words and definitions that MacDonald denounces are also found in the second edition.
Webster's Second,
for example, includes the same two definitions for
biweekly
that so exasperated MacDonald when he read them in
Webster's Third.
Sledd also quotes the preface to
Webster's Second
to show that the same precepts that MacDonald attributes to the pernicious influence of structural linguistics also formed part of the operating principles of those who compiled the 1934 dictionary. For instance, the second edition was also more concerned with reflecting current usage than acting as a repository of linguistic antiquities. William Allan Neilson, editor of
Webster's Second,
had written in the preface, “More important than the retaining of time-honored methods or conventions has been the task of making the dictionary serve as an interpreter of the culture and civilization of today.”

The second edition relied on usage statistics in the same way as the third. The introduction states that definitions and pronunciations “must be written only after an analysis of citations.” MacDonald's idea that Gove had rejected the traditions of
Webster's Second
was simply mistaken, in Sledd's view. He suggests that to be consistent, MacDonald should “strike out both editions from his lexicographic honor roll,” as they both made editorial decisions based on current American speech.
25

Sledd's paper effectively exposed the weaknesses of MacDonald's argument. However, as a presentation at a scholarly conference, it did not reach nearly the audience of MacDonald's
New Yorker
article. MacDonald's article, with all its inaccuracies, was widely quoted at the time and remains one of the most potent pieces of ammunition in the war against
Webster's Third.

Perhaps the strangest fallout from the
Webster's Third
controversy was the founding of the rival
American Heritage Dictionary.
James Parton, president of the American Heritage Publishing Company, first tried to buy Merriam out. Declaring that “Merriam's great scholarly reputation has become tarnished … through its publication of the radically different Third Edition,” Parton vowed to take the dictionary out of print if he acquired the company.
26
When his takeover bid failed, he turned to the next best thing—a dictionary that would challenge
Webster's.

The
American Heritage Dictionary
made its debut in 1969. It was not an unabridged dictionary on the scale of
Webster's Third,
but it boasted an innovation that should have endeared it to language purists—a Usage Panel. The Panel consisted of 105 journalists, prominent writers, college professors, and editors. Members included Dwight MacDonald and several other people who had written against
Webster's Third.
The dictionary's editors submitted questions about usages that troubled them and the Panel voted for or against the word or phrase, sometimes contributing supplementary comments as well.

Usage turned out to be a knottier issue than Parton might have realized when he set up his panel. Panelists frequently disagreed with each other or with the editors on the level of acceptability of a particular term. They were nearly unanimous about
ain't
—99 percent disapproved of it in writing and 84 percent in both writing and speech. For the most part, however, the
American Heritage
Usage Panel seemed no more authoritative or less random than the statistics of real usage that influenced
Webster's Third.
27

Gradually, the turmoil over the dictionary subsided and work at the Merriam Company continued as before. Gove and his staff began to collect and edit material for the next edition. Over the next decades, Merriam would issue several updated versions of the third edition, each with an addenda section for new words. The main text itself was reprinted without major revisions. Gove retired in 1967 and died in 1972 at the age of seventy. His obituary in
The New York Times
notes that “many of his innovations, developed for Webster's Third, have been adopted by dictionary-makers today.”
28

*   *   *

Dictionaries have moved on since the 1960s. The
American Heritage Dictionary
still features the judgments of its Usage Panel, but the Panel now counts several linguists among its members.
Webster's Third
has also evolved. The Merriam Company (now called Merriam-Webster and owned by Encyclop
æ
dia Britannica) took the dictionary online in 1996. In 2008 work began on the fourth edition, with updated sections posted to the site as they become available.

To some extent, grammar has also moved on. Few schools now provide the kind of formal grammar lessons that were a routine educational experience from colonial times until the mid-twentieth century. Murray and his successors have disappeared from the classroom. Grammar advisors still abound, but they tend to take a more relaxed attitude toward such classic shibboleths as nominative-case pronouns after
be
and prepositions at the end of a sentence.

“These days,” writes former
New York Times Book Review
editor Patricia O'Conner, “anyone who says ‘It is I' sounds like a stuffed shirt.” As a practical demonstration of this view, her style guide is titled
Woe Is I.
Bryan Garner, author of
Garner's Modern American Usage,
concurs, saying, “
It is me
and
it's me
are both fully acceptable, especially in informal contexts.”
29

Sentence-final prepositions also receive a warm embrace from up-to-date usage arbiters. For instance, O'Conner calls the stricture against their use “a worn out rule” and Mignon Fogarty, also known as Grammar Girl, lists the rule as one of her top ten grammar myths. Garner labels it “spurious.” Voicing a sentiment that Webster and the rational grammarians would heartily approve, he admonishes, “Latin grammar should never straitjacket English grammar.”
30

In fact, modern style guides have abandoned many of the grammatical strictures popularized by Lowth and repeated by later grammar book authors.
Shall
is generally agreed to be archaic. Double negatives, although still considered substandard in most cases, are marginally acceptable in a phrase such as
not unattractive.
Split infinitives, which Richard Grant White condemned as “a barbarism of speech,” are now widely tolerated, although editors at a few publications have held out against them.
31
The idea that common, long-standing usages should be accepted as standard English is starting to seem a little less radical.

Even the rules in
The Elements of Style
are not held in the same reverence they once were. A roundup of opinions published by
The New York Times
on the fiftieth anniversary of Strunk and White's joint publication includes as much criticism as praise. Although O'Conner considers the writing advice—omit needless words, be clear, use concrete language—“pure gold,” she sees much of the grammar advice as “baloney.” Writer and writing teacher Ben Yagoda calls it “a strange little book” and Mignon Fogarty suggests that “‘Strunk and White said so' is not a sure-fire defense in a style argument.” Stephen Dodson, an editor who blogs at
Language Hat,
calls the book “the mangiest of stuffed owls.”

The severest critic is linguist Geoffrey Pullum. He accepts the style advice as harmless, but “the uninformed grammar rules are a different matter.” He points out, as others have, that Strunk and White often break their own rules, for instance, in their frequent use of passive verbs. Besides, Pullum notes, “the book's edicts contradict educated literary usage, even that of books published when Strunk was young and White was a baby.” Sentences like
Everybody brought their own,
which they condemn, has been “good standard English” since the time of Jane Austen.
32

Pullum criticizes Strunk and White at greater length in an article for
English Today.
His chief complaint is the same one that linguists Lounsbury and Whitney made against Richard Grant White and the verbal critics. Neither Strunk nor White was qualified as a grammarian. Their statements about grammar, says Pullum, “are riddled with inaccuracies, uninformed by evidence, and marred by bungled analysis.” He makes his point the same way that Lounsbury and Whitney did in their
College Courant
articles—with textual evidence. For instance, he counters Strunk and White's rule “With
none,
use the singular verb” by noting that respected writers have been using
none
with the plural since at least the nineteenth century. Oscar Wilde's 1895 play
The Importance of Being Earnest
contains the line, “None of us are perfect” and Bram Stoker's
Dracula
includes several instances of
none
with plural, such as “None of us were surprised.” After several examples along these lines, Pullum concludes, “
Elements
is a hopeless guide to English usage.” Worse, it is harmful because it convinces educated adults that their perfectly acceptable usage is incorrect.
33

In a response in the same journal, Michael Bulley, a professor of classics and English defends
The Elements of Style
against Pullum's criticisms. He, too, relies on classic arguments. White insisted in his response in
The Galaxy
that his feel for language was more relevant for giving usage advice than Lounsbury and Whitney's technical expertise. Similarly, Bulley writes that the basis for style choices should be “aesthetic, not technical.” While Bulley shares some of Pullum's misgivings, he disapproves of Pullum's method of combing English literature for evidence that a usage is acceptable (or to put it another way, that Strunk and White's rules are wrong). Collecting examples, in his opinion, is not a substitute for employing good judgment. After all, he says, Strunk and White “wrote a style guide, not an overview of usage.” They are entitled to offer their considered opinion on what constitutes elegant speech.
34

In spite of the changed attitudes reflected in many usage guides, old-style verbal critics are still thick on the ground. New modes of communication like e-mail and Twitter have only increased anxieties about correct usage. Because people no longer have a handy copy of Murray's on their shelf, they turn to online style arbiters for guidance. Blog posts with titles such as “Top Ten Grammar Mistakes” and “Words You're Probably Using Wrong” are as plentiful as grammar advice columns were in nineteenth-century magazines. Typically they're written by bloggers with no special expertise, just an urge to speak their minds about usage. The rules they provide for the grammatically insecure often sound as if they were lifted straight from
Godey's Lady's Book.
As with many usage arbiters from earlier days, grammar bloggers tend to rely on personal taste and their memories of once-heard rules rather than an informed understanding of the structure of English.

For hard-line language purists, good taste and traditional rules still trump linguistic history and widespread usage, and they still respond with anguished cries to any changes in the linguistic status quo. An explosion of outrage greeted the 2012 announcement of the Associated Press that it would accept
hopefully
in its deprecated sense of “it is hoped.” “The AP Stylebook Makes a Change—and Breaks Our Hearts,” wails the subhead of a
Salon.com
article that bemoans the degradation of grammar. A
Washington Post
story about the new rule drew over six hundred comments, nearly all negative. Their tone ranged from resigned to horrified. Arguments that
hopefully
is no more problematic than other sentence-modifying adverbs like
thankfully, sadly,
and
frankly
were dismissed as irrelevant, as was the fact that the word has been in common use for decades.