Brits take a hammer to grammar
By BILL DUNCAN Edwin Newman wrote a book in 1974 called “Strictly Speaking: Will America Be the Death of English.” It was such a great book that I made it required reading for the newspaper editorial staff where I was editor. After I had retired and moved to Oregon and became an editor of a senior citizen’s publication in 1981, I received a press release from the Internal Revenue Service in Portland, Ore. saying that Newman was to be the keynote speaker at a convention in that city. The press release said he was the author of “Strickly Speaking.” I mailed a copy of the press release to Newman, whom I had had several communications with over the years. I received a one-line reply from Newman: “I was struck dumb, pretty much strickly speaking.” Strictly speaking, my biggest worry now is that some editor’s spell checker won’t “correct” the misspelled word. However, Newman now has another worry. According to Meera Selva, an Associated Press writer in London, England, it may not be the Americans but Englishmen themselves who cause the death of the mother tongue. Meera said the town officials in Birmingham, England have been taking a hammer to grammar for years and have now created a catastrophe over the apostrophe. For some years, those officials have been quietly dropping apostrophes from street signs. It was such a problem that when the King’s English purist would put the apostrophe back on the sign for St. Paul’s Square with an indelible black pen, they were considered vandals. Recently the town council made it official and by law banned the punctuation mark from signs in a bid to end the dispute once and for all. Councilor Martin Mullaney, who heads the city’s transportation committee, said he hopes to stop the campaign to restore the apostrophe. He obviously doesn’t understand grammarians. Already they are sharpening their quills for open warfare on those who would besmirch the King’s, or is it the Queen’s, English. Meera quotes Marie Clair of the Plain English Society, who calls the apostrophe “such a sweet looking thing that plays a crucial role in the English language.” Marie and I agree fully and I’d like to send Councilor Mullaney a copy of my language bible, a simple little book from across the pond that sums up the language so clearly that even our cousins could learn a few things from its pages. I have sung its praises for all the sixty plus years I have been formally writing in the English language. That simple little book is “The Elements of Style,” by William Strunk Jr. and later revised by his student, E.B. White. For the record, this is what professor Strunk said about that sweet looking thing called the apostrophe: “Form the possessive singular of nouns by adding ‘s. Follow this rule whatever the final consonant.” Strunk noted what every editor has had to pound into reporters. “A common error is to write it’s for its, or vice versa. The first is a contraction, meaning it is. The second is a possessive.” Let’s face it, whether you are speaking English English or American English, it is a complicated language, but it is the most expressive language on the earth, beautiful in sound and tone. It is also the most mangled. I savor the well-turned phrase and the metaphor, but as Richard Lederer writes in his “Revenge of Anguished English,” we sometimes become tongue-tied especially when we mix modifiers like the ones he cites: “I saw the dead dog driving down the highway.” Or “She handed out brownies to the children wrapped in Tupperware.” The best one I have seen lately, was an ad: "Run your car in Auto Ads until it sells for $19." Those English council members should be reminded, we grouchy grammarians are down right possessive about the sweet looking thing called the apostrophe. (Bill Duncan can be reached at bduncan@nrtoday.com or by writing to Bill Duncan’s P.O. Box 812, Roseburg, OR 97470)
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