I just published “The Grammar Wars…And Why You Should Avoid Them.” Click here to read my article. 

Contrary to what we’ve been told, English grammar is doing just fine!

Today I’m going to give you a glimpse into what lexicographers do. (They’re the professionals who add, delete, and edit dictionary definitions.)

One recent Saturday morning before the Russian invasion of Ukraine, I heard a startling remark during an MSNBC conversation between host Ali Velshi and journalist Erin Laughlin. Laughlin was saying that “So far, not a single Russian troop has been seen.”

I heard English change, right there on my TV. For some years now the word troop has been acquiring a new meaning and usage. I’m sure that lexicographers were very interested in that MSNBC broadcast!

Here’s what I mean. When I was growing up, troop always referred to a group of soldiers or Girl Scouts or Boy Scouts. I belonged to Girl Scout Troop 4 in Bethpage, New York. Sometimes several troops would get together for an activity. Five troops might include 50 or 60 Girl Scouts.

Nowadays, though, troops means “soldiers.” For example, here’s an excerpt from the December 15 New York Times. The subject is the American military withdrawal from Iraq:

Although Thursday’s ceremony represented the official end of the war, the military still has two bases in Iraq and roughly 4,000 troops, including several hundred who attended the ceremony. At the height of the war in 2007, there were 505 bases and more than 170,000 troops.

That 170,000 troops means 170,000 soldiers.

What’s so exciting (or disturbing, depending on your point of view) is that Erin Laughlin used troop as a singular word to mean “one soldier”: “not a single Russian troop has been seen.” That’s new! I haven’t heard anyone else use “one troop” that way. (Back in 1955, we would have thought she meant “not a single Russian military unit has been seen.”)

I can guarantee that Erin Laughlin’s remark was recorded and noted in a vocabulary log. If many more people start using troop that way, eventually we’ll get a new dictionary entry.

And that, folks, is how dictionaries are updated.

Grammar Day was March 4 this year. I always abstain from the annual Grammar Day celebrations, and all of my friends know why: I think grammar is bogus.

Grammar rules and terminology rarely help with a writing problem – quite the opposite, in fact: grammar often leads to confusion.

Monday’s New York Times is a good example. The news summary on the front page featured this sentence:

Angry over blackouts and rising electricity bills, a small but growing number of Californians is going off the grid.

Obviously “a number” requires a singular verb – is. Except that in this case it doesn’t. The actual article got it right:

Angry over blackouts, wildfires caused by utilities and rising electricity bills, a small but growing number of Californians in rural areas and in the suburbs of San Francisco are going off the grid.

In English a number is plural, but the number is singular.

A number of Californians are going off the grid.  (are is plural)

The number of members keeps dropping.  (keeps is singular)

Grammar – as I said earlier – is bogus. It’s not a set of guardrails to keep you from making a mistake. Instead it’s an attempt to explain – in fancy language – what the English language is doing. The language always comes first, and then grammarians rush in to try to explain what’s happening.

Often that process doesn’t work the way it’s supposed to. Grammarians may have to do some fudging to come up with a plausible rule to explain the crazy usages that have found their way into English.

But if you can’t rely on grammar rules, how can you be sure you’re writing correctly? Luckily there are some common-sense answers.

For starters, you can do what I’ve done (and continue to do): read some good books about English usage. I highly recommend Theodore Bernstein’s books, for example.

(Did you notice that I said usage rather than grammar? Usage does not claim to be a divinely inspired answer to our questions about language. It deals with language problems in a practical way: how do today’s educated speakers handle a particular issue?)

Another strategy is to make sure you have as much experience with English (preferably good English) as possible, especially if you’re an international learner. Read! Watch TV! Talk with a native speaker!

And you can make a resolution that you’ll always, always have someone look over your writing before you submit or post it.

My friend Jenna just sent me a list of mistakes that don’t matter, created by Bill Murphy at Inc.com.

I always have fun with these lists! There’s usually a mixture of good and bad advice, and that’s certainly true of this list. (For starters, most of them have nothing to do with grammar, and a number of them aren’t wrong and never were. I’ll explain those points in a future post.)

Let’s talk about items 1 – 5 today:

1.  Bill Murphy wants us to forget about “his or her” and use their instead. Bravo, Bill! I’ve taken a vow that I will never use the unspeakably clumsy “his or her” again.

Scared to do it? Listen: nobody will even notice. I just published an academic book, and there’s not a single “his or her” anywhere. I used they every time The copyeditor didn’t change any of them.

2.  Who vs. That: Murphy says that you shouldn’t worry about this one. I’m usually careful with it, but I do use who when I write about someone’s pets (or my own). Again, nobody’s going to notice.

3.  Less vs. Fewer. Murphy says you shouldn’t worry about it. I agree, and I’m going to push this  further than he did. It’s a bogus rule. In 1770 a writer named Robert Baker said that he thought “less” should be reserved for uncountable nouns (like coffee, snow, and smoke). Suddenly a rule was born!

English had been using less for countable nouns (“less potatoes”) for almost a thousand years before Robert Baker made his suggestion. What do you think are the chances of breaking a language habit that’s been around that long? Nil.

Many people overuse fewer – another argument for using less. (People, stop saying “fewer than one!” Gack!)

4.  Skipping the -ly in adverbs. Yes – sometimes.

In May, when the Kentucky Derby comes along, I’ll be writing a post about this line from “My Old Kentucky Home”: “The sun shines bright/On my old Kentucky Home.” Stephen Foster didn’t think he had to use brightly, and you don’t have to either.

5.  That vs. Which. I think Murphy missed the boat with this one. He quotes a rule that I find weird: “Use that if cutting the clause would change the meaning of a sentence.” I’m a pretty smart person, but that rule sounds like gobbledygook to me.

Here’s a rule that I (ahem!) invented that works great for me: Never let a comma touch the word that. It’s a rule of thumb and doesn’t work 100% of the time. But my goodness – it’s untangled so many punctuation problems for me!

It solves the that vs. which problem in the wink of an eye: I recommend taking the downtown shuttle, that runs every 30 minutes between 7 AM and 7 PM.

Nope! There’s a comma next to that. I’d change it to this: I recommend taking the downtown shuttle, which runs every 30 minutes between 7 AM and 7 PM.

We’ll do 6 – 10 in a future post.

Yes, sometimes I make rules for myself – and then happily break them! More about that in a moment.

Let’s talk about Latin first. I wasn’t a serious student in high school, and I don’t remember much from my four years of Latin. (Before you judge me, let me ask how interested you would be in Caesar’s Gallic Wars if you were fifteen years old!)

One thing did stay with me, however: the non solum…sed etiam pattern in Latin. It translates into “not only…but also.” Here’s an example:

Jane non solum studet difficile sed etiam iocum esse cum.

Jane not only studies hard but also is fun to be with.

Although my husband (who never studied Latin) sometimes uses this pattern, I dislike it. I would probably go wild with this sentence I just gave you and and come up with something like this:

You might expect a serious student to be a serious person as well. But Jane makes straight A’s–and she’s fun to be with.

I just searched my new book about Bernard Shaw. I used “not only” a mere three times in the book – and always without the “but also.”

Here’s one of those sentences. (It’s about Freddy Eynsford-Hill and Eliza Doolittle in Pygmalion/My Fair Lady.)

Not only does he talk with one of his social inferiors: he marries her–and then goes on to do something else that’s equally unthinkable: he becomes one of those “inferiors” himself–a shopkeeper.

Recently I was discussing all of this with a writer friend – who promptly pointed out that this is a mouthful of a sentence. I’m the one who’s always railing against cramming too much into a sentence – and look at what I’ve done! (Even worse, there are two colons.)

Damn it – I like this sentence. I think it has a lot of energy. The language is actually very simple: all but four words have only one or two syllables. (I just received the page proofs for this book, and I’m happy to report that the copyeditor didn’t touch this sentence.)

Writing rules (even the ones I make up myself) have limited usefulness. You have to go with what works. (Did you notice that my sentence about Jane ended with a preposition? Was that a problem for you? Did you care?)

If I were writing for a more general readership, there’s a simple fix for that fancy sentence about Freddy and Eliza: make it two sentences.

Not only does he talk with one of his social inferiors: he marries her. And then he goes on to do something else that’s equally unthinkable: he becomes one of those “inferiors” himself–a shopkeeper.

It’s okay to have fun and feel free with language!

A recent article in the New York Times explored reasons why fewer New Yorkers are riding the subways:

In a fall survey, 90 percent of New York subway riders who had not yet returned to the trains said that their concern about crime and harassment was a major factor in when and if they would return.

I’m a former New Yorker who rode the subways for years. They provide a vital service for the city, and I hope they will soon come roaring back.

Meanwhile, though, I have a complaint about the Times: “if and when” is redundant. It’s a cliche that professional writers should avoid.

If those former subway riders indeed come back, there’s going to be a when eventually. We’ll see a statement like this in the Times: “Ridership was up 10% in May.” When did the riders come back? In May.

Here’s a better version of that sentence:

In a fall survey, 90 percent of New York subway riders who had not yet returned to the trains said that their concern about crime and harassment was a major factor in deciding whether they would return.

(I could also have used “if they would return.” In this sentence, whether is a little more professional. There’s nothing wrong with showing off my language skills, is there?)