Many years ago I had a job teaching English as a second language. (That’s a misnomer: often my students were learning English as their third or even their fourth language.)

Along the way I took some courses to enhance my teaching skills. One course that was strongly recommended was the history of the English language. I thought that was ridiculous, but I wasn’t about to argue with my mentor. It turned out to be one of the most useful courses I’ve ever taken. (More about this in a future post.)

I had a small advantage because I’d already studied Old English in graduate school. (In a later course I read a big chunk of Beowulf in Old English. Talk about a challenge!)

I don’t know whether the history of English course made me a better ESL instructor, and I’m still not sure why I decided to spend all that time studying Old English. I am not good at languages. If you showed me a line of Beowulf today, I’d be lost. None of the grammar and vocabulary stuck.

But those courses did reshape my thinking about English – and about languages in general. Along with an introductory linguistics course, they’re probably the most important learning experiences I had in college.

They convinced me that some of my ideas about English – and languages in general – didn’t work, and they prompted me to replace those outworn ideas with better ones.

I used to worry about the deterioration of the English language. Every day I saw clumsy sentences, misused words, and bad grammar. I viewed the future of English with dismay and foreboding.

So it was a salutary shock to learn that the deterioration had already taken place – back in the eleventh century! Before the Norman Conquest in 1066, Old English was an incredibly sophisticated language. It had an elaborate system of genders, declensions, and conjugations. Many nouns had eight forms, and some had ten.

Modern English has only two forms for most words (bird, birds, rock, rocks). Some nouns have only one. When I say pants or scissors, I could be talking about fifty of them – or only one.

If the Beowulf poet could hear us talking today, he would weep. Almost all of the elegant grammar he used so carefully has disappeared.  Cat is cat whether you’re using the nominative, accusative, dative, or ablative cases. We do have a genitive form: cat’s. But that’s all.

And yet we can write and speak with immense subtlety and sophistication. We have the plays of Shakespeare, the poems of John Donne, and the complexity of a technology manual or a medical textbook. How is that possible?

The answer is that word order took over the job that those declensions used to do. In Old English (as in Latin and many other languages), word order didn’t matter. The endings told you whether John loves Mary or Mary loves John.

And so I learned here’s no such thing as a “primitive” or “deteriorating” language. When one feature is lost, another one takes its place. Language always finds a way.

Think for a moment about sign language. There’s very little to work with – no sounds, very little punctuation, and no capital letters. But a hearing-impaired person can grasp even the most subtle points in a lecture just by paying attention to the person who’s signing.

Charlie Labonte – a friend who’s an interpreter – told me that interpreters use facial expressions to convey adverbs (happily, sadly, quickly, angrily).

Back to English. It’s likely that English will undergo some significant changes in the next 70 or 80 years. We may lose some cherished grammar and venerated rules. But English won’t lose its power. As little snippets of our language fall into disuse, new ones will come along…that’s a guarantee.

So we can all relax – at least as far as the future of English is concerned!

There’s one more point before I go. You might wonder if I was exaggerating about the differences between Old English and Modern English. I can assure you that I wasn’t. As evidence, here’s the Lord’s Prayer in Old English:

When I started this blog, it never occurred to me that I would be making friends. In fact my big worry was that nobody would read my posts at all.

Surprise! Build it and they will come. I hear regularly from friends – old and new – with questions to ask and knowledge to share. Here are three interesting exchanges I had in January:

1.  My friend Janis Koike made a perceptive comment about a recent Instant Quiz. Here’s my quiz sentence:

Because of the noise in the next room, we couldn’t hear her verbal directions. WRONG

My point was that verbal means “having to do with words,” so writing is also a form of verbal communication. Here’s the correct answer I was looking for:

Because of the noise in the next room, we couldn’t hear her oral directions. CORRECT

But – as Janis pointed out – you don’t need oral. If we didn’t hear the directions because of the noise, of course they were spoken. So “we couldn’t hear her directions” works just fine.

I want to pass this on because redundancy is a habit many of us fall into: “a Jewish rabbi,” “first dibs” (I heard that one on The Big Bang Theory), “the final conclusion.”

2.  My next example isn’t going to teach you anything useful. Well, maybe it’s useful to know that I’m crazy!

A reader I know only as Willem suggested I might have used shibboleth incorrectly in a post.

That seemed strange because I knew for a fact that I had never used the word shibboleth in my life. It’s not part of my working vocabulary. I wasn’t even sure what shibboleth meant.

I started scrolling through recent posts so that I could tell Willem he must have imagined it…only to spot shibboleth in my January 28 post: I’ve often wondered where the shibboleth against because came from.

Yikes. I quickly looked up shibboleth and decided Willem was probably right. Here’s my revised sentence: I’ve often wondered where the fear of because came from.

But I’m also discovering that I apparently don’t know my own brain and my own habits!

3.  My third example comes from the January 14 issue  of The New Yorker. An article called “Greek to Me” includes a sentence describing how “a band of traveling dwarfs plunder treasure from the past.”

No. No. No. The rules of subject-verb agreement require you to write that “a band of traveling dwarfs plunders treasure from the past.” A band…plunders. (You skip over “of traveling dwarfs” because it’s a prepositional phrase.)

Let me assure you that I don’t have a nervous breakdown every time I come across a verb mistake. (I make them myself!) But this is The New Yorker, which fusses over every comma, every verb, every hyphen. And the article was written by Mary Norris, who spent years as their head copyeditor – and has written a wonderful book called Between You and Me: Confessions of a Comma Queen.

So I wrote to her. A few days later I received this comforting reply from Mary:

With collective nouns, the effect of the plural sometimes trumps the grammar. The effect of the plural “dwarfs” overruled the singular “band.” These things are not cut and dry.

That “not cut and dry” was exactly what I needed to hear, and I pass it on to you. If the rule makes a sentence sound awkward, screw the rule. (Mind you, I don’t think Mary Norris would put it that inelegantly.)

Isn’t it wonderful to have friends?

My students often hear me insist that periods and commas have to go inside quotation marks, like this: Scott Joplin made musical history with “The Maple Leaf Rag.”

But what about question marks? The answer is that it depends on the sentence.

If the question mark is part of what you’re quoting, put it inside. For example, there’s a famous song called “How Are Things in Glocca Morra?” The question mark is part of the song. Put it inside (as I just did).

But the song “Yankee Doodle” doesn’t end in a question mark. If you’re asking a question about the song, put the question mark outside the quotation marks: Do you know all the verses to “Yankee Doodle”?

Let’s try it with a couple of sentences. If someone is asking a question, put the question mark inside: “Where are my gloves?” asked Abigail.

Now compare this sentence: Did Joan just say “I lost my wallet”? There’s no question in Joan’s voice. She was making a statement. Put the question mark outside (as I just did).

Today we’re going to analyze three sentences you might hear at a job interview. Are they written in good English – or bad English? (I want to give credit to James Harbeck for some of these ideas.)

  1.  I think you’ll be a good fit in our department.

  2.  Your skill set is compatible with the rest of our team.

  3.  You’ll be an enjoyable person to work with.

This is a good test of how much of a stickler you are! I would rate myself high on a Cranky English Teacher scale. But – surprisingly – I would accept all three sentences as written.

1.  I think you’ll be a good fit in our department.

This sentence might bother some sticklers because it uses a personal verb (think) and a contraction (you’ll). In business writing you might want to speak for the whole department or the whole company rather than yourself. And if you’re writing formally, you’d probably insert that: “I think that you’ll be a good fit in our department.” 

But in a conversation in a job interview, I think the sentence is fine.

2. Your skill set is compatible with the rest of our team.

A stickler would revise the sentence with “that of”: “Your skill set is compatible with that of the rest of our team.”

But I refuse to use that of. Ever. (So sue me!) Again – the sticklers have a point. The original sentence is comparing a set of skills with a group of people. Inserting “that of” makes the sentence tidier and more logical.

I would argue that English was never meant to be tidy and logical. Inserting that of makes the sentence sound stiff and unnatural. The meaning of the sentence is perfectly clear. Why gum it up with that of?

3.  You’ll be an enjoyable person to work with.

A stickler might be unhappy about using “with” at the end of the sentence (even though there’s no rule against doing that). You can revise it to avoid the issue: You’ll be an enjoyable person with whom to work. But to me that revision sounds stiff and unnatural.

Before I finish, I’m going to offer one more version:

4. I’ve expressed to the department that the advantage of working with you will be considerable for us.

My immediate reaction to this sentence is – GACK. If you know anyone who writes this way, please do them (and all of us!) a favor: straighten them out. I beg you.

  *   *   *   *   *   *   *

The point today is that good English seems easy to define when you’re an English teacher talking to a class of wiggling fifth-graders. But in the workplace – or your own creative writing – it may not be simple at all.

All of us need to be aware of the rules that shape our writing. Are they outdated? Are they still doing the job for us? Where did they come from? Was it a credible source? Most important – do we understand the importance of varying our writing practices as we go from one setting to the next?

Good questions all!

A few days ago, my friend Jane Brumbaugh sent me a problematic sentence from the newspaper: “He’s one of the trustees whose been instrumental.” The obvious problem is that whose doesn’t work. The correct word is who’s (a contraction of who has).

But there’s another problem too. Or maybe not! This sentence contains a controversial grammatical structure that even expert grammarians argue about. I think the sentence should read like this: “He’s one of the trustees who have been instrumental.”

But many people think this is correct: “He’s one of the trustees who has been instrumental.”

I’m going to argue my case, and then you can decide which version you think is better. To begin, compare these sentence pairs:

He’s a trustee. He has been instrumental.

He’s one of the trustees. They have been instrumental.

I think these sentence pairs have different meanings. When you combine them with who, you need different verbs.

He’s a trustee who has been instrumental.

He’s one of the trustees who have been instrumental.

You can’t say “He’s one of the trustees who has been instrumental.”

I rest my case!

Because I’m on the editorial board for a scholarly journal, I often give feedback to aspiring scholars.  (A bonus is that every piece of advice applies to any writing you do!)

• Never submit to a journal you don’t read regularly. Know their preferred style and the topics that interest them.
• Keep up with your field. Know what the breaking issues are. Know who the leaders are.
• Be the writer that people want to read. Make your writing lively and strong.
• Write straight, powerful sentences. Here’s a rule of thumb I use: if there are more than three commas in a sentence, it’s probably too complicated.
• Have only one idea in a sentence.
• Don’t be afraid to use I and you. They help you connect to your readers.
• Professional writers start about 10% of their sentences with and and but. Follow their lead: those transitions make for lively writing. (If you’re afraid to start a sentence with but, read this: )
• Never use passive voice unless you absolutely have to.
• No gobbledygook, ever. Use ordinary words unless a big word is absolutely necessary. If you use an unusual word, define it right in the sentence: When you start looking for metadrama (“drama examining itself,” according to Richard Hornby), you’ll discover many surprises in Shaw’s plays.
• Proofread, proofread, proofread. Then proofread again.
• Find a mentor – an established authority in your field. Ask them to go over your article before you submit it. (Give your mentor plenty of lead time.)

Yes, you can start a sentence with because!

This is a follow-up to my previous post about the word because. I’ve always wondered why so many people are afraid to start sentences with because!

My friend Neal Steiger came up with a likely reason. He remembers being told that if you answer a question with because, you’ll probably end up with a fragment:

Why did you ride your bike to school today?

Because my mother didn’t have time to drive me here.  FRAGMENT

That’s great advice when you’re eight or nine years old! But let’s dig a little deeper. You need to know that anything that starts with because is an extra idea.

That’s no problem (despite what Mrs. Wilson told you in the third grade!) if you attach your because idea to a real sentence. (Think of a garage or a porch – they’re nice to have if you have a house to go with them.)

Here’s how you could use because to answer a question correctly:

Why did you ride your bike to school today?

Because my mother didn’t have time to drive me, I hopped on my bike.  CORRECT

I think this sort of thing happens all the time in school. A teacher gives you an answer that works fine if you’re eight or nine years old. But eventually we all have to grow up!

 I hereby give you permission to start sentences with because. Just remember to make sure they’re complete.

Because Big Bang Theory is such a funny TV show.  FRAGMENT

Because Big Bang Theory is such a funny TV show, I never miss it.  CORRECT

Because of the heavy rainfall last weekend.  FRAGMENT

Because of the heavy rainfall last weekend, we had to cancel our plans.  CORRECT

My thanks to Neal Steiger!

My husband’s first newspaper editor thought because was a bad word. Any time Charlie used because in a feature, he would get a phone call asking him to change it.

She apparently never noticed that professional writers use because all the time. Nor did she  bother to look it up in the dictionary. Charlie and I breathed a sigh of relief when she finally moved on to another publication to annoy a new set of writers.

I’ve often wondered where her fear of because came from. I’ve known lots of people who believe (mistakenly) that you can’t start a sentence with because. (Of course you can! Go to www.Bartleby.com and use your Find command to see how great writers use because.)

But I’ve never known anyone else who thought because was a bad word. Where did that notion come from?

This morning I may have found the answer. Here are two sentences from an education blog. Note that the because idea is ambiguous here:

Our test scores were on the rise and had been for a number of years. We were not on the California list of worst schools because of said rise.

(I don’t like “said rise,” but let’s leave that for another day.)

Reading those two sentences, you might mistakenly conclude that the rise caused some schools to be on the California list. The sentence needs to be revised:

Because of that rise, we were not on the California list of worst schools.

Simple enough. So here are the points I’d like to make today:

1.  Because is a useful and proper word. Don’t be afraid of it.

2.  When you use because, make sure your meaning is absolutely clear.

3. (Big picture!) The workbook exercises and grammatical discourses beloved of teachers have limited usefulness in teaching students how to write well. They won’t, for example, help you make today’s sentence more clear.

4.  Always ask a friend or family member to read and give you feedback about what you’ve written. Don’t argue when they suggest you change something you’d written. Fix it.

One more point remains: the widespread (and mistaken) belief that you can’t start a sentence with because. Tune in Friday to learn where that urban legend probably came from (courtesy of my friend Neal Steiger).