Most of the specific rules were nonsense: among vs. between, passive voice dogmatism, etc.
Unfortunately, these things have become shibboleths that indicate membership in a particular class of people. If you used among vs. between "wrong" in high school or college, there's a good chance that your teacher corrected you, so now most of the educated elite believes the rule to be "right".
Bizarrely, Strunk & White's prescriptive rules, which had very little to do with English grammar historically when they wrote their book, have now—via generations of dogmatic education—become generally accepted by the educated elite. Ironically, a descriptive grammar must therefore now acknowledge the among vs. between distinction, at least in formal English writing.
We must right this wrong! If we shout loudly enough, maybe we can create entirely new shibboleths, and a new generation of elites can look down on the uneducated masses that follow Strunk & White.
Thanks for this. Even if some don't agree with this, it does in my opinion show that it can be rather silly to treat any style guide as authorative. Especially an old one, in a world where there are considered to be multiple types of English. A bit of a rant maybe, but this stems from having wasted hours on a discussion on whether or not a comma is mandatory after a certain construct, and 'Elements of Style' was being treated as being definitive on the subject (for reasons I still do not understand), even though I presented other guides which would say the opposite or would say that there is no decision.
On that subject: as a non-native speaker I always wondered if there actually is a grammar (not syle) guide which is considered authorative, as there is for other languages?
> On that subject: as a non-native speaker I always wondered if there actually is a grammar (not syle) guide which is considered authorative, as there is for other languages?
No living language has a fully authoritative grammar book, as the grammar of living languages is discovered, not prescribed. That's a part of what linguists do, after all, and they have plenty of debates over precisely how to do it. The overly-simplified grammars taught to language learners as "Correct" are only the tip of a huge, wonderously complex iceberg.
Here's an example of a more academic English grammar:
As a French native, born and living in France, I can guarantee you that "a fully authoritative grammar book" backed by a public institution can be a think. Really, here even orthographic errors is supposed to be deemed as a "fault" for which you should feel very ashamed. All that with a large set of inconsistent rules, all having exceptions.
All that is is a style guide for government publications. It's not binding on anyone else, and certainly is not representative of how French people really speak or write.
Of course it's not representative of how French people speak, write, or think. It does influence all aspects of their life wherever they have verbal interactions with some institution, and all the side effect it can permeate to.
I think Italian actually has an official version, which is from when the Academia della Crusca got together and decided what would be the official Italian. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Accademia_della_Crusca
"The 'split' infinitive has taken such hold upon the consciences of journalists that, instead of warning the novice against splitting his infinitives, we must warn him against the curious superstition that the splitting or not splitting makes the difference between a good and a bad writer."
I was expecting something a bit more comprehensive and damning after the link… but if one of the most objectionable and controversial claims in the book is about adverbs modifying “unique” I think I’ll continue to recommend elements of style.
For me, the most damning thing about the book is the invective against the passive. The book opens with use of the passive voice, its authors apparently unaware how idiomatic its use is in certain circumstances. It introduces the passive voice with a sentence that is in the passive voice but is so independently clunky that an astute reader would wonder "no, wait, why would anyone attempt the passive?" It then goes through a rewriting-several-examples section where only one of the four examples manages to start in the passive.
Why should one use a book on English grammar that can't correctly identify English grammar in the first place?
(For reference, the first sentence is "This book is intended for use in English courses in which the practice of composition is combined with the study of literature.")
Out of curiosity I googled "we intend this book" and people do seem to use that wording sometimes in introducing their books. Why don't Strunk and White do that?
Not certain as to why, but one plausible explanation is an opinion that using first person pronouns would be inappropriate, as it is "too conversational" or something like that.
That seems plausible, and pretty much demands the passive voice. Otherwise they would have had to do something like "The authors intend this book..." which is rather strange when the authors are also the ones who wrote the sentence.
> ..but if one of the most objectionable and controversial claims in the book is about adverbs modifying “unique”..
This reads like plain bad faith. Pullum lists a dozen or so very specific problems with S+W, and goes on at some length about the evidence against each. Any of those problems is more objectionable than the "modifying unique" thing, which Pullum mentions once in passing but doesn't discuss.
It's such a bad book. Why would you continue to recommend it? It doesn't follow its own advice. It doesn't have any clue of how language actually functions. The style it purports to offer up is old and crusty. There are far better books that take a more correct view of the differences between style and correctness (Pinker's, King's).
There's a reason linguists hate S&W. It's really not good.
"Conceivably Strunk was trying to inculcate in everyone the habit of writing like Henry James and not like Mark Twain" was where I lost it. And I love Twain!
I hope that someday this message makes it into the primary schools. It'd be nice to have a future generation with a significantly lower count of idiotic language pedants.
