for the grammar geeks

[cellio]

Today I learned that one of my favorite grammar/usage curmudgeons has a blog, which I've now syndicated: bill_walsh.

Bill Walsh is the author of Lapsing into a Comma, a sensible style guide with interspersed rants. Just my kind of thing! Also see Rules That Aren't, a response to some commonly-held "rules" like not splitting infinitives. (And hey, apparently he has a new book out. Must investigate.)

I don't agree with everything he says, of course, but he makes solid, often-entertaining, arguments for his points instead of just saying "thou shalt do X".

Comments

[nsingman.livejournal.com]

The primary reason I won't quibble too much with his "Rules That Aren't" is because he phrases many of them as absolutes (such as never splitting an infinitive). I still try to mostly avoid (heh, heh) doing this, but as with terminal prepositions, it's not really something I'm afraid of. :-)

Thanks for the pointer. I believe I shall start reading Mr. Walsh. Very few former NFL head coaches seem as well-versed in the finer points of the English language as he does. :-)

[cellio]

It's refreshing to encounter other people who follow the "does it sound wacky?" and "is it logical?" paths. I think a lot of grammer rules could be subsumed into those two tests, particularly the latter. A lot of "rules" violate those tests, as he points out. (One of my bigger complaints about "traditional rules" is about terminal punctuation and quotes/parens. The punctuation goes inside if it is part of the remark contained in the quotes/parens and outside if not, IMO. It took literal strings in program inputs/outputs to get people to finally start agreeing with that, but I think it's much more general than that.)

[gnomi.livejournal.com]

His other book, The Elephants of Style is very good, indeed. I have both Comma and Elephants on my reference shelf.

[cellio]

Thanks. I've added Elephants to my "pending" Amazon list. (Some people use the wish list to suggest gift ideas to others; I use it to keep track of things I want to get eventually, either when the used price is really good or when I need something to bring an order up to free-shipping levels. That said, I'll probably get Elephants soon because I really liked Comma.)