In praise of pedantry

Snickers Man

I yield to nobody in my admiration for Stephen Fry and I must admit to enjoying his diatribe against those pedants who prefer "complaining about grocers' misplaced apostrophes" to enjoying the richness of the English language for its own sake.

But while sympathising with his outlook, and delighting in the way he expresses it in this instance, thereby handing him a moral victory, I must disagree with his implication that paying attention to proper grammar and the correct meaning of words is useless pedantry. At least, that is what I infer from his polemic (I do know the difference).

It is important to distinguish between the written and spoken word, and between the truncated forms of communication found on signposts, notices, advertisements or slogans and the more complete expression necessary when producing prose.

One should not become irate when seeing signs in a shop window advising that zippers may be repaired "While U Wait", but it is still not correct use of English. It is permissible for a supermarket to mark its express checkout lane with a sign indicating that it is only to be used by shoppers having "Eight items or less" in their baskets, but it is not acceptable for a prose passage in a newspaper, magazine or book to deviate from the more correct "eight items or fewer".

It is also important to know that certain words are not synonyms. I have already alluded, as does Mr Fry, to the difference between infer and imply, and one should remember that there is a semantic difference between disinterested and uninterested, for example. Once the meaning of words becomes confused, language is in danger of becoming a means of obfuscation rather than communication. It loses its purpose, in other words.

The guardians of the English language are writers, or more specifically editors, of journals, newspapers, magazines and books. Increasingly, the task is being assigned to, if not always accepted by, those producing TV and radio programmes. It is right that such people adhere to higher standards of expression and comprehension than retailers seeking to maximise sales or increase throughput in their outlets.

In normal conversational English, one does not need to retain a horror of ending sentences with a preposition, and even in written English that stipulation is something that should be avoided rather than prohibited. Is it really so bad to say "We don't end sentences in prepositions round here"?

On the other hand, just have a read of John Waters' column in today's Irish Times to see how complacency about this issue can lead to gobbledygook.

"At its core is the equivalent of a conjuring trick, in which everybody involved pretends to be unaware of."

Ya wha'?

Similarly, split infintives are to be cautioned against rather than banned completely. Common sense must be used to determine when correcting a split infinitive is necessary to aid comprehension or only needs to be done to satisfy a self-righteous pedantic urge.

Mr Fry reveals that Oscar Wilde, one of his heroes as a magnificent exponent of the English language, once added a note to a manuscript he sent to his publisher which gladly delegated to the recipient the task of "sorting out all the 'woulds' and 'shoulds', 'wills' and 'shalls' and 'thats' and 'whiches'. "

From which one could infer (there's that word again) that Oscar considered himself above such menial work; or alternatively, that although he had no taste for it himself, he at least recognised that it was a necessary job that somebody, preferably somebody else, had to do properly.

What this vignette shows is that writing and editing are two different tasks, requiring different skills and in many cases different talents. Sadly, one of the consequences of the huge increases in productivity brought about by computers in publishing is that those different functions are increasingly having to be performed by the same people, whose strengths may lie at one or other end of the scale.

Editors, in the copy production rather than managerial sense of the term, now have to fight their corners just to remain in existence at the expense of those who can churn out the loggorhea but have no wish to diligently pore over their copy correcting the usages and abusages that only professional editors would be aware of.



Mr Fry starts his piece by decrying the fact that more English-speaking people don't enjoy their marvellous language for its own sake. In the long run, the question to be asked is: Can one derive greater enjoyment from passages of English, whether they be written or spoken, that are properly constructed, felicitously phrased and whose words mean what their authors intended them to mean than one can from chunks of words which may be hastily assembled in such a way as to be ambiguous, contradictory or just plain incomprehensible?

Don't wish too hard for the demise of language pedants. You may miss them when they're gone.

FoxT

These days so many modern writers seem to lazily think that prepositions are there to casually and somewhat promiscuously end sentences with. Many of these writers are in. Hadn't you noticed? To easily track these trends is one of the things the internet is for.

Of course O'Toole ought to consistently write better so that as a writer in our National newspaper of record that so many people read every day with relish and which they get so much information about politics and economics to name but a few both nationally and internationally to say nothing of the crossword and the chess problem every day he himself would be thought more of.

And if ever a shopping center wishes to tastefully put up signs in decent english what the plain people can come to delightedly see and enjoy that is the one what I for one will always want to go to.

Snickers Man

OK. OK. I see what you're up to.

FoxT

I infer from your post that you take some pride in your capacity to differentiate between inference & implication. Each to his own, I say.

Nevertheless this cast a shadow over the valid points that you made, and I felt compelled to respond , in the interests of thread equilibriation


- FoxT

FlutterinBantam

FoxT wrote: »

I infer from your post that you take some pride in your capacity to differentiate between inference & implication. Each to his own, I say.

Nevertheless this cast a shadow over the valid points that you made, and I felt compelled to respond , in the interests of thread equilibriation


- FoxT

I agree, luckily he stopped short of 'explaining to the masses' what a 'polemic' is.

A good post somewhat clouded by the faint, but definite whiff of intellectual snobbery.

I would have thought the lad was above that myself.:cool:

Very good observation and treatise Mr Fox.

Snickers Man

Mr Fry's original piece, to which I linked, made reference to the difference between infer and imply.

I concede that maybe I laboured that point a little too strenuously.

Perhaps I should have passed the piece by a sub editor before submitting it.

FlutterinBantam

Snickers Man wrote: »

Mr Fry's original piece, to which I linked, made reference to the difference between infer and imply.

I concede that maybe I laboured that point a little too strenuously.

Perhaps I should have passed the piece by a sub editor before submitting it.

Laboured?

No way Jose.


There was a distinct bang of intellectual snobbery permeating from every pore of that post.

You thought you could ride the cultured horse over the peasants of the News & Media contributors.

In fairness you acceded to the criticism , but I would opine, you won't take the folk in here for granted again.


Am I right ,or am I right:D

FoxT

Let he who has never got carried away on boards cast the first stone!
We've all done it from time to time & to be fair the Stephen Fry piece was good, and not something I would have found myself if left to my own devices.

FlutterinBantam, I think we have our pound of flesh at this stage....


- FoxT

FoxT

I just spotted a major blunder. I can no longer edit the post so I will correct it here:

FoxT wrote: »

Of course O'Toole ought to consistently write better so that as a writer in our National newspaper of record that so many people read every day with relish and which they get so much information about politics and economics to name but a few both nationally and internationally to say nothing of the crossword and the chess problem every day he himself would be thought more of.

This should of course read

"Of course O'Toole ought to consistently write better so that as a writer in our National newspaper of record that so many people read every day with relish and which they get so much information FROM about politics and economics to name but a few both nationally and internationally to say nothing of the crossword and the chess problem every day he himself would be thought more of. "


Sorry lads

Snickers Man

FlutterinBantam wrote: »

Laboured?

No way Jose.


There was a distinct bang of intellectual snobbery permeating from every pore of that post.

You thought you could ride the cultured horse over the peasants of the News & Media contributors.

In fairness you acceded to the criticism , but I would opine, you won't take the folk in here for granted again.


Am I right ,or am I right:D

My you are precious!!!

I said in the first two paragraphs of my piece that I both admire Mr Fry and sympathise with the general points he makes. And that I enjoyed reading/listening to his piece.

But I felt that this forum, which I suspect is read by and receives many contributions from local members of the journalism profession, would be the best place to state that there is nevertheless a need for proper standards of English when producing the written word. Such standards encompass accuracy, semantic correctness and style.

So I wasn't Talking Down to the journalistic plebs; on the contrary, I was Talking them Up by reaffirming the importance of their skills.

Unless you are a journalist and equate Professional Pride with Intellectual Snobbery.

FoxT wrote:

I just spotted a major blunder. I can no longer edit the post so I will correct it here:

Tut. Tut. You indulge in minor pedantry while leaving the major error uncorrected!!!

It was not the great O'Toole whose column carried the impenetrable and incomprehensible jumble of prepositions. It was the not-so-great John Waters, as stated in the OP.

Stephen Fry would not approve.

FlutterinBantam

I have re-read your post and may have been over the top in my criticism.

Good to have a standard to which you aspire to, and personally I have no time at all for those who profess to ignore the most basic rules of grammar and spelling.


Please allow me to apologise unreservedly.