Crappy Old Stuff 14th Edition

One of my favorite quotes:

Vocabulary and success go hand in hand. Investigation has shown that the man with a large number of words at his command is the one who comes to lead and direct his fellows. Through his knowledge of words, through his ability to make them express the exact shade of his meaning, he gives to his ideas real power.

-- John C. Hodges

[My emphasis]

I walked into to the 50 ₵ room at the Stargvegas library the other and walked out $16.50 poorer. Oddly, most of the 33 books were neither crappy nor especially old.

See? There's William Shatner and Princess Grace and that economist dude and some Christmas stories. Hey! Daughter C! That art book is beautiful.

One (not pictured) is the fourteenth-- 2001-- edition of Harbrace Handbook of English by John C. Hodges (et al.) first published in 1941. Though some chapters are slightly renamed in the newer edition, the presentation order remains the same. The quote above comes from Chapter 19, "Good Use" (1941), "Good Usage" (2001).

Thumbing through the Preface of my new book, I see that Chapter 19

has been extensively rewritten to help students write positively to and about all people. It now offers advise not only about handling matters of gender in language, but also about including members of all races, classes, ages, and orientations.

Isn't that nice? 

Left 1941; Right 2001

As you can see, the page sizes are approximately the same, although the font sizes are not-- 2001's are smaller. Not including the index, the crappy old book has 404 pages. The somewhat less crappy newer book (there are now, in 2014, eighteen editions) has 797. Both books deal with the grammar, mechanics, punctuation, elements of style,* and larger elements of the paragraph, papers and letters-- things that are pretty basic.

Now I ask you, why in the world does the 2001 edition need to be 97% longer than first edition? 

Left 2001; Right 1941

Because the coauthors of the fourteenth edition, Suzanne Strobeck Webb, Robert Keith Miller, and Winifred Bryan Horner did not read chapter 21, Wordiness, in the first edition. 

* Below the fold

How many times

are we going to have to go over this?

THE UPLOADER. One. 1. Singular. 

THEIR. More than one. >1. Plural.

It's called "agreement," people. 

Sheeze. Even Missy know this and she are a dog for crying out loud.

"What? Did I hear my name? Are you blogging about me again?"

"No. I only mentioned you in passing."

"Ruff??"

"Okay, Rock. I'll mention you, too."

Hey! Smarty Pants!

I'll remind readers that this is not a political blog. But we do love us some good crappy old fashioned grammar here on the Farm. So let me help you out, Mr. Smarty Pants Secretary of Education, and do some editing for you.

Regarding parents' opposition to "Common Core," you said:

white suburban moms who — all of a sudden — their child isn’t as brilliant as they thought they were, and their school isn’t quite as good as they thought they were.

Should be:

white suburban moms who — all of a sudden — discover their child isn’t children aren't as brilliant as they thought they were, and their school isn’t schools aren't quite as good as they thought they were.

It's called AGREEMENT. Sheeeze.

It's "As"

At Drudge just now (9:33 central)

1. Should be: 

I don't think he has the same values as we have.

Good Lord! This is 5th grade stuff. Let's walk it back and think it through. 

"That" can be used in the restrictive sense-- defining, incorrectly in this case, "values." (Ranting about grammar can be fun!)

(E.g., if I said, "The dog that needs a bath is asleep on the couch," we all know I'm talking about Missy, as opposed to Rocky.)

The sentence is comparative-- comparing his values to ours. It is a mistake to use "that" as a comparative conjunction. 

Also, one does not "do values." One has values. So we may ask, "As we do what?" Do have?

2. Who is this "we" of whom you speak? We-- as in you & I? No, sir. Do drag me into this. We-- as in your & I-- have very little in common with respect to our value systems. And to flip the coin, do not claim to be among those who share my values.

Oh. Sorry. My bad. It's the royal "we." Duh.

WRONG: Who should the United States befriend?

RIGHT: Whom should the United States befriend?

Harbrace Handbook of English p.78 (1951)

The conversation turned 'round to a grammar question the other evening. Who vs. Whom? Miss M was studying and we did not have the benefit of her input. We tossed around a few "virtually essential" possible rules based on For Whom the Bell Tolls and finally decided that it was an empirical question, the answer to which would likely be found in a crappy old book.

To that end, and since nothing of import happened in the World, on the World Wide Web, or on the Farm today, I present to you Who, Whom, and Whose.

"Wait just a gall-dang minute," you're shouting. 

Alright, already! I hear ya! There's no need to shout. You'll wake the dogs.

"Why get Whose-- or for that matter Who's on First-- involved in this? I thought you were just going to 'splain when to use Who and when to use Whom! Not that I care all that much anyway, Marica. I mean, really, Who cares?"

That's a fine point, but hear me out. Leaving Whose out of the picture would be like saying "I-me-" and forgetting "mine." And that just don't seem right. If you're going to say, "I" and "me" why not just finish what you intended to say and say "mine?"

Who, and it's forms, Whom and Whose, are pronouns. Unlike most nouns (en inglés, que es) most pronouns change case based on how they are used in the sentence. The interrogative and relative pronoun Who is no different than most. Used as the subject of a sentence or clause, one uses the nominative case Who. As the object of a sentence, clause or preposition, the objective case Whom. And as a possessive relative pronoun, the possessive Whose.

I found this helpful:

A Writer's Manual and Workbook Enlarged Edition p.46 (1944); See there? I-me-mine. Note: singular and plural relative pronouns have the same form. Thank the Lord!

Let's re-write the WRONG and RIGHT question sentences which use the interrogative Who as

The United States should befriend ___Who / Whom___?

Let's re-write the re-written WRONG and RIGHT question sentence as if it were answered.

The United States should befriend ________. 

[Pick a country. Any civilized country will do-- it's grammar, not foreign policy.]

Clearly, your civilized country of choice is the object of the sentence. Thus, in the question we need the objective form Whom.

The WRONG / RIGHT example comes from The Harbrace Handbook of English, Whose author notes

Before the verb, the interrogative who is acceptable colloquial English, but formal English requires the objective whom.

With respect to Who as a relative pronoun, I initially found this, from The Writing of English (1938), virtually essentially useless:

The case of a pronoun depends entirely upon its syntax; it may or may not be in the same construction as its antecedent:

I saw a man who knows you.
I saw a man whom you know.

I thought just as virtually essentially useless-- especially if you are a smidgen rusty on the vocabulary of grammar, as am I-- was this from The Essentials of English Composition Revised Edition 1945):

A pronoun that joins a dependent clause to a substantive is called a relative pronoun. Careful writers use who to refer to persons, which to refer to things, and that to refer to persons of things.

1. That is preferred to who or which (a) when the relative clause is restrictive ... or (b) ...

[Keep in mind that That / Which is an interesting issue for which / that I have no time (for) here.]

This, however, was useful (The Essentials, p57):

The case of a relative pronoun, like that of a personal pronoun, is determined by the function of the connective in its own clause, not by the case of the antecedent.

That's the syntax of "depends entirely upon its syntax."

So if a pronoun can join, a noun can separate.

I saw a man. A man knows you. 

Nominative case.

I saw a man. You know a man. 

Objective. 

What could be more simple? 

Subject-Nominative-Who

Object-Objective-Whom

Possessive-Possessive-Whose

RIGHT: Whom should the United States befriend? 

Good question. First answer? The United States.
~~

This post is dedicated to Daughter C, Mike, and A. Leland, without whom I would not have asked the Who / Whom question. 

This post is brought to you by the following crappy old books, without which I could not have answered the Who / Whom question.

A. Howry Espenshade, THeodore J. Gates, and Richard D. Mallery. The Essentials of English Composition Revised Edition. D.C. Heath and Company, Boston. 1945.

John C. Hodges. Harbrace Handbook of English. Harcourt, Brace and Company, New York, Chicago. 1951.

Paul P. Kies. A Writer's Manual and Workbook Enlarged Edition. F.S. Crofts & Co., New York. 1944.

John Matthews Manly, Edith Rickert and Martin Freeman. The Writing of English (Complete Edition). Henry Holt and Company, New York. 1938.   

It's One Thing to Have Less Items, It's Quite Another to Have Less People

AND 

People (pl) A Teacher (sing)

How the heck does this not grate on your ear enough to make you want to scream out loud?

Headline: 

FEWER PEOPLE WANT TO BE TEACHERS

Well, no wonder. If this is what you have to work with. People with no ears. 

Fewer items post here.

Authoritative Sources & a Bonus!

Yesterday I bemoaned the sad fact that no one knows how to outline and alluded to the obvious fact that no one is going to learn by trying to outline using MS Word. I offered up my own version of the correct notation for varying degrees of subordination. However, at the time I could not find an authoritative source for notation beyond the second degree.

This has bothered me all morning, because-- you know-- I am all about authority! Just ask the experts!

Fortunately, the two crappy old grammar/writing books I looked at yesterday* are not the only crappy old books I have on the subject.

page 352 of Harbrace Handbook of English by John C. Hodges. 1941.  Harcourt, Brace and Company: New York, Chicago

I. major headings
   A. subheadings of the first degree
        1. subheadings of the second degree
            a. subheadings of the third degree
                (1). subheadings of the fourth degree

I could be wrong, but I remember MSWord offering a choice of the parenthetical subheading. Of course, that's when I used MSWord back in the crappy olden days. Apparently MS has caught onto the sad fact that no one knows how to outline.

BONUS below

A Terrible Squabble

Daughter C. and Miss M. got into it today. Fur was flying! There was cussin'! They were throwing books at each other left & right. They pleaded with me to referee.

At issue were the definitions of the words, "farther" and "further."

It was ugly and it got uglier when-- after I'd gotten out my crappy old 1892 Noah Webster Dictionary-- I pulled out my brand spankin' new version of Elements of Style.

Page 153: The Copyright Page; Click to see the actual history of this volume.

Daughter C. and Miss M. were fooled by the 2005 version of this crappy old book into thinking it was a brand spankin' new book. But I digress.

And then, as arguments among and between The Girls often do, the argument took a turn and they were off arguing about the Vices and Virtues of Old English versus Middle English. (It's all about etiology, don't you know?)

When the dust had settled, I gave them their assignment for the day. No one looked happy-- I think they thought it was a holiday or something. But when I told them what it was, they perked up. Read Martin Luther King, Jr.'s "Letter from a Birmingham Jail." 

That's Bettter!

My comment wasn't published but I believe was read.

Than "We"

Please pardon the lack of blogging. It is not as if there's nothing to blog about!

The rain ruined the long John melons.

The Sonic Boom of the South was awesome (but not quite as awesome as a few years ago).

There was no fly over. Near the end of our National Anthem folks turned their heads in anticipation of the flyover. Disappointing.

The kids are here at the Farm and prompted a teeny dish washer unloading/loading dish banging rant from me.

I've begun skimming through The Art of Conversation. Much to say about this.

Missy is regressing. What to say about this?

And I would have thought the super smart people at PJMedia knew better than this:

Why our pets have better health care than us do.

I often write ungrammatically. Most of the time-- I hope-- it's intentional, "ain't no such thing," and so forth. But this is inexcusable. As James J. Kilpatrick would have noted, this should grate on one's ear. To be sure, it does on mine.

Does this make sense?

Fewer Americans than ever say they are going out to eat less often than they were six months ago.

I saw a headline at Newsalert.com which read: 

41% Dining Out Less Often Than They Were Six Months Ago

It linked to a Rasmussen poll. I took a look and that (above) is the lead sentence, followed by this:

A new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey finds that 41% of American Adults say they are dining out at a restaurant less often compared to six months ago.  Only five percent (5%) say they are going out to eat more often, while a majority (53%) is dining out about the same as they were six months ago.

I just checked with Mr. Big Food and he agrees that the first sentence says the opposite of the reported results. 

Geeze. And they think we can't talk no good English.

Oh! Em! Gee!

At Daughter C's suggestion, I am perusing the World Wide Web seeking information on training a German Shepherd Dog - Labrador Retriever Dog mutt, otherwise known as a "Labrashepherd" or "Sheprador." (OMG, r u kidding me?) The first three pages of search results contained a great number of Qs and As at dog forums, and general websites devoted to answering questions disseminating misinformation.

I have a few questions, myself. 

1. How hard is it to put your pinky finger on the shift key (or hit that little ↑ button on your iPhone) so as to type "I" rather than "i," as in "I have a question"? 

i will be getting a 3/4 lab 1/4 shepherd mix in a month, it will be 2 months old when i get it. i wanted to read up on books on them, but wanted to no if it was ok to read books bout a labrador. will it be the same or not?

there r things i want to no, to.

Diagram this!

I said, 

Having a husband who has a cousin who owns a Wine|Beer|Cigar Bistro is Big. 

And then I issued a challenge-- 

[Diagram that sentence!] 

I really thought I'd be able to diddle around on the World Wide Web while in our hotel room last evening and find an on-line sentence-diagramming program.  I was expecting something like a language translator or equation solver. I did not find anything of the sort. I was bothered by this all the way from Midlen, Louisiana to The Farm.  

This, dear reader, is why we need crappy old books. Without a crappy old books, we are doomed to lose sentence diagramming in our time. Fortunately, I have more than one crappy old book that teaches sentence diagramming. The clue to diagramming a gerund phrase comes from my favorite. 

From Harbrace Handbook of English, by John C. Hodges of the University of Tennessee; Copyright 1941 by Harcourt, Brace and Company, Inc., and printed in The United States of America; p 51

Pages 54-55 of Harbrace explain how to diagram subordinate adjective clauses. If I've understood these pages correctly, my little sentence is diagrammed:

Note that the main sentence is, "Having a husband is Big."

~~

The front matter indicates that this book is from the English Workshop Series, and Harbrace is intended for "Grades Eleven and Twelve."  It is intense. Perhaps this winter I'll share more Harbrace. It is one of my favorites.

One potato, two potato... .

One of the BIG irritations in my life is the "less than 10 items."

The following rant is prompted by

I’d much rather use self-checkout than wait in the express line behind people who don’t understand the concept of an item limit.

from Supermarket Self-Checkouts Being Replaced With People at Outside the Beltway as seen on Instapundit.

This is going to be a rant. But it might be fun.

There is no such thing as LESS than 10 items. The number of individual items that are smaller than 10 are counted in whole numbers: 1-2-3... 9. When you count such items-- those that we've already stipulated can only be counted by whole numbers, -- "equal to," "more than," and "fewer than ten," are the only grammatically correct ways to make comparisons.

"Fewer" modifies a noun that can be subdivided into whole number increments, even though those increments could be further divided into smaller whole number increments. I have one cup of sugar. You have two. You have more than I. I have 1 1/2 cups. You have 3/4 C. I have twice as much sugar as you do.

On the other hand... 

"Lesser" modifies things that really are not describable in terms of whole numbers."This glass is less full than that one."

I do not expect this blog to get a whole lot of traffic. But I do hope that some who I cajole into stopping by, will. In this post, I'm talking to you.

I know I've asked a lot of you over the years. Thank you. If you could get the fewer than/lesser than thing and spread it around, I would appreciate it. I'm not asking that be grammar Nazis, just that you help me maintain some standards. :-)

Thanks!