What Not to Do (to Me)

For your delectation, here is a link to an article in The Economist (strange as that may seem) about "The Dreaded Comma Splice."  I know that my readers are educated people who, of their own free wills, read things like this blog that won't get them anywhere, and that many probably know what a comma splice is.  The great thing, as is so often the case, is not just the article - though I liked it and read it of my own free will - but the comments.  Scan them.  You will see that there are more than enough grammarians in this world, and apparently none of them work at The Economist. 

Most delicious is the comment that asks whether there are any proofreaders at the magazine.  Now, a proofreader's job is to make sure that the galley faithfully renders the manuscript - it's copyreaders who, before the manuscript goes to print, correct grammar and format, mechanical things like that.  This is an example of how it is always dangerous to start correcting other people, especially online.

This little tempest caught my fancy because earlier today I had begun an idle thing that I didn't think would amount to a post titled -

What Not to Do (to Me) 

Wouldn't that be a great list? Things not to do, as opposed to these obnoxious to-do lists that have become a feature of the busy American life.  I am inspired to think of this subject by an unpleasant incident at a recent social occasion.  I was talking, just social chatter, not a big monologue, when Someone in the group interrupted to correct my grammar.  (Notice that there is no obscenity in that sentence.)  I'd said something like this "He told my friend and I . . . "  What I was going on to say is lost forever when Someone said, "Me.  It should be 'my friend and me,' because you are the object, not the subject."  And he wasn't even an English major.

If you want to have some kind of aggressive social tool for refined special occasions, this is a good way to take the wind out of someone's sails.  Although I have multiple degrees in English and writing credits, I was dead in the water, not because I used "bad grammar," because I was startled.  Later I spent some time speculating on Someone's aggression toward me.  My father's voice echoed from a long-ago day when I told him a kid was bullying me.  He snorted and said, "What'd you do to deserve it?"  I reminded him he is dead.

But there is always cause.  I thought I must have inadvertently sounded smart, something like that, and my acquaintance might have had the kind of problem some older men have when women step out of their place.  It is worth noting that this little incident put a drop of ink in the water surrounding that relationship.  There you are.  I'm not the only person who has trouble with right speech.

Against the subjunctive

Why do I have to write about important things?  (Are there such things?  How do you tell important from trivial?)  So I will write about a tee-shirt that has inspired me, but first I'm going to write about when Otto went to the zoo.  Age three.

At three, many children are still enlightened, and he was one of them.  One day Cassie and I took him to the Columbus Zoo, which is very nice indeed, though it has no jumping pigs.  I think, looking back, that he was finding it all very bright and confusing.  They live in the country and at that time had two St. Bernard dogs.  Was he supposed to be impressed by a mangy-looking wolf that just laid there in the shade?  But even little kids try to please you, and he trundled around with us.

When he got home, his Dad asked him, the way grown-ups do, "What did you see at the zoo?" Otto was glad to comply.

"There was this big pile of ketchup!" he said.

Unimpressed by a herd of flamingos, bored by the elephants, what he had seen that was memorable was in The Congo Room, one of their food pavilions.  It had a big ketchup dispenser, always a thrill for a little kid anyway, and a lot of ketchup had been allowed to drip down there and form a little mountain.  You never saw anything like it, and if you were a grownup, you didn't see it, not really.  But Otto did.  Strangest damn thing he ever saw. I hope he doesn't grow up to be a food engineer or stylist or something as a result.
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These marks ~ like this ~ are called tildes.  You don't care, I don't care, though having names for things is useful, or you end up having to say, I don't want the red stuff on my hot dog, I want the yellow stuff.  And (a conjunction, pretending that this sentence is related to the one before it) the following statement is in the subjunctive, because it indicates a condition contrary to fact:

If it were easy, everyone would do it.

Because see, it's not easy.  What's not?  Sometimes I think everything's not, so it is useful to remember that nothing matters.  Well, I saw the above  motto on a tee-shirt at the health club recently, and immediately wanted to buy Cassie one like that - she once looked terrific in a Nike shirt that said in huge letters -

This was before this was morphed and marketed to death, and it struck me as a pretty good principle in life.

Now.  Back to the first motto.  I wouldn't have said it that way.  I'd have said -

If it was easy, everyone would do it.

Wouldn't you?  Well, maybe not.  I live in Ohio, USA, and learned my English the rough-tumble way.

I see these niggling distinctions as basically serving to indicate subtle divisions of class; in other words, my dislike is political.  I was happy when I learned, in a linguistics class, mind you, that there are two approaches to grammar.  There's Prescriptive, the kind we were graded on, and Descriptive - that is grammar that describes the way people actually talk.  So if I were you (which I'm not, that's why I use the subjunctive there), I'd get the second tee-shirt.  When you wear it, you will find out which of the people around you is a member of the Secret Grammar Police.  Then you can avoid them.