Founding Grammars

by Rosemarie Ostler

The second edition relied on usage statistics in the same way as the third. The introduction states that definitions and pronunciations “must be written only after an analysis of citations.” MacDonald’s idea that Gove had rejected the traditions of Webster’s Second was simply mistaken, in Sledd’s view. He suggests that to be consistent, MacDonald should “strike out both editions from his lexicographic honor roll,” as they both made editorial decisions based on current American speech.25

  Sledd’s paper effectively exposed the weaknesses of MacDonald’s argument. However, as a presentation at a scholarly conference, it did not reach nearly the audience of MacDonald’s New Yorker article. MacDonald’s article, with all its inaccuracies, was widely quoted at the time and remains one of the most potent pieces of ammunition in the war against Webster’s Third.

  Perhaps the strangest fallout from the Webster’s Third controversy was the founding of the rival American Heritage Dictionary. James Parton, president of the American Heritage Publishing Company, first tried to buy Merriam out. Declaring that “Merriam’s great scholarly reputation has become tarnished … through its publication of the radically different Third Edition,” Parton vowed to take the dictionary out of print if he acquired the company.26 When his takeover bid failed, he turned to the next best thing—a dictionary that would challenge Webster’s.

  The American Heritage Dictionary made its debut in 1969. It was not an unabridged dictionary on the scale of Webster’s Third, but it boasted an innovation that should have endeared it to language purists—a Usage Panel. The Panel consisted of 105 journalists, prominent writers, college professors, and editors. Members included Dwight MacDonald and several other people who had written against Webster’s Third. The dictionary’s editors submitted questions about usages that troubled them and the Panel voted for or against the word or phrase, sometimes contributing supplementary comments as well.

  Usage turned out to be a knottier issue than Parton might have realized when he set up his panel. Panelists frequently disagreed with each other or with the editors on the level of acceptability of a particular term. They were nearly unanimous about ain’t—99 percent disapproved of it in writing and 84 percent in both writing and speech. For the most part, however, the American Heritage Usage Panel seemed no more authoritative or less random than the statistics of real usage that influenced Webster’s Third.27

  Gradually, the turmoil over the dictionary subsided and work at the Merriam Company continued as before. Gove and his staff began to collect and edit material for the next edition. Over the next decades, Merriam would issue several updated versions of the third edition, each with an addenda section for new words. The main text itself was reprinted without major revisions. Gove retired in 1967 and died in 1972 at the age of seventy. His obituary in The New York Times notes that “many of his innovations, developed for Webster’s Third, have been adopted by dictionary-makers today.”28

  * * *

  Dictionaries have moved on since the 1960s. The American Heritage Dictionary still features the judgments of its Usage Panel, but the Panel now counts several linguists among its members. Webster’s Third has also evolved. The Merriam Company (now called Merriam-Webster and owned by Encyclopædia Britannica) took the dictionary online in 1996. In 2008 work began on the fourth edition, with updated sections posted to the site as they become available.

  To some extent, grammar has also moved on. Few schools now provide the kind of formal grammar lessons that were a routine educational experience from colonial times until the mid-twentieth century. Murray and his successors have disappeared from the classroom. Grammar advisors still abound, but they tend to take a more relaxed attitude toward such classic shibboleths as nominative-case pronouns after be and prepositions at the end of a sentence.

  “These days,” writes former New York Times Book Review editor Patricia O’Conner, “anyone who says ‘It is I’ sounds like a stuffed shirt.” As a practical demonstration of this view, her style guide is titled Woe Is I. Bryan Garner, author of Garner’s Modern American Usage, concurs, saying, “It is me and it’s me are both fully acceptable, especially in informal contexts.”29

  Sentence-final prepositions also receive a warm embrace from up-to-date usage arbiters. For instance, O’Conner calls the stricture against their use “a worn out rule” and Mignon Fogarty, also known as Grammar Girl, lists the rule as one of her top ten grammar myths. Garner labels it “spurious.” Voicing a sentiment that Webster and the rational grammarians would heartily approve, he admonishes, “Latin grammar should never straitjacket English grammar.”30

  In fact, modern style guides have abandoned many of the grammatical strictures popularized by Lowth and repeated by later grammar book authors. Shall is generally agreed to be archaic. Double negatives, although still considered substandard in most cases, are marginally acceptable in a phrase such as not unattractive. Split infinitives, which Richard Grant White condemned as “a barbarism of speech,” are now widely tolerated, although editors at a few publications have held out against them.31 The idea that common, long-standing usages should be accepted as standard English is starting to seem a little less radical.

  Even the rules in The Elements of Style are not held in the same reverence they once were. A roundup of opinions published by The New York Times on the fiftieth anniversary of Strunk and White’s joint publication includes as much criticism as praise. Although O’Conner considers the writing advice—omit needless words, be clear, use concrete language—“pure gold,” she sees much of the grammar advice as “baloney.” Writer and writing teacher Ben Yagoda calls it “a strange little book” and Mignon Fogarty suggests that “‘Strunk and White said so’ is not a sure-fire defense in a style argument.” Stephen Dodson, an editor who blogs at Language Hat, calls the book “the mangiest of stuffed owls.”

  The severest critic is linguist Geoffrey Pullum. He accepts the style advice as harmless, but “the uninformed grammar rules are a different matter.” He points out, as others have, that Strunk and White often break their own rules, for instance, in their frequent use of passive verbs. Besides, Pullum notes, “the book’s edicts contradict educated literary usage, even that of books published when Strunk was young and White was a baby.” Sentences like Everybody brought their own, which they condemn, has been “good standard English” since the time of Jane Austen.32

  Pullum criticizes Strunk and White at greater length in an article for English Today. His chief complaint is the same one that linguists Lounsbury and Whitney made against Richard Grant White and the verbal critics. Neither Strunk nor White was qualified as a grammarian. Their statements about grammar, says Pullum, “are riddled with inaccuracies, uninformed by evidence, and marred by bungled analysis.” He makes his point the same way that Lounsbury and Whitney did in their College Courant articles—with textual evidence. For instance, he counters Strunk and White’s rule “With none, use the singular verb” by noting that respected writers have been using none with the plural since at least the nineteenth century. Oscar Wilde’s 1895 play The Importance of Being Earnest contains the line, “None of us are perfect” and Bram Stoker’s Dracula includes several instances of none with plural, such as “None of us were surprised.” After several examples along these lines, Pullum concludes, “Elements is a hopeless guide to English usage.” Worse, it is harmful because it convinces educated adults that their perfectly acceptable usage is incorrect.33

  In a response in the same journal, Michael Bulley, a professor of classics and English defends The Elements of Style against Pullum’s criticisms. He, too, relies on classic arguments. White insisted in his response in The Galaxy that his feel for language was more relevant for giving usage advice than Lounsbury and Whitney’s technical expertise. Similarly, Bulley writes that the basis for style choices should be “aesthetic, not technical.” While Bulley shares some of Pullum’s misgivings, he disapproves of Pullum’s method of combing English literature for evidence that a usage is acceptable (or to put it another way, that
Strunk and White’s rules are wrong). Collecting examples, in his opinion, is not a substitute for employing good judgment. After all, he says, Strunk and White “wrote a style guide, not an overview of usage.” They are entitled to offer their considered opinion on what constitutes elegant speech.34

  In spite of the changed attitudes reflected in many usage guides, old-style verbal critics are still thick on the ground. New modes of communication like e-mail and Twitter have only increased anxieties about correct usage. Because people no longer have a handy copy of Murray’s on their shelf, they turn to online style arbiters for guidance. Blog posts with titles such as “Top Ten Grammar Mistakes” and “Words You’re Probably Using Wrong” are as plentiful as grammar advice columns were in nineteenth-century magazines. Typically they’re written by bloggers with no special expertise, just an urge to speak their minds about usage. The rules they provide for the grammatically insecure often sound as if they were lifted straight from Godey’s Lady’s Book. As with many usage arbiters from earlier days, grammar bloggers tend to rely on personal taste and their memories of once-heard rules rather than an informed understanding of the structure of English.

  For hard-line language purists, good taste and traditional rules still trump linguistic history and widespread usage, and they still respond with anguished cries to any changes in the linguistic status quo. An explosion of outrage greeted the 2012 announcement of the Associated Press that it would accept hopefully in its deprecated sense of “it is hoped.” “The AP Stylebook Makes a Change—and Breaks Our Hearts,” wails the subhead of a Salon.com article that bemoans the degradation of grammar. A Washington Post story about the new rule drew over six hundred comments, nearly all negative. Their tone ranged from resigned to horrified. Arguments that hopefully is no more problematic than other sentence-modifying adverbs like thankfully, sadly, and frankly were dismissed as irrelevant, as was the fact that the word has been in common use for decades.

  Skirmishes continue to blow up between linguists and the traditionalists who blame them for the disasters befalling English. Ryan Bloom, in a blog post for The New Yorker, accuses irresponsible “descriptivists” of ignoring the “real-world costs” of giving people “permission to speak and write how we like.” According to Bloom, Americans who’ve been led to think that it’s okay to break usage laws—to say who instead of whom, for instance—are letting their language slide, and therefore losing out on good jobs and education. British verbal critic Lynne Truss is even more scathing in a column for The Telegraph. She castigates linguists and lexicographers who are “entirely concerned with looking cool and broad-minded and ‘descriptive’” rather than throwing their weight behind proper usage. She is scandalized by the thought of “well-paid academics just sitting back and enjoying the show” while the language collapses around them.

  Dwight MacDonald and other critics of Webster’s Third felt much the same way about Gove. To go back further, Richard Grant White felt much the same way about Fitzedward Hall, and various reviewers felt that way about William Fowle and the other rational grammarians. Accepting that Who did she speak to? is normal English for everyone except those who, in Webster’s words, “learn the language by books,” is still seen by some as a sign of linguistic radicalism and moral recklessness.35

  Just as defenders of Webster’s Third responded to critics by explaining the true purpose of a dictionary, linguists have replied to these attacks by explaining that descriptivists are not in charge of the language. Their job as researchers is to observe and analyze. Even if they tried to dictate usage, they argue, they’d be unlikely to have any better luck than traditional grammarians or verbal critics. Usage standards change over time in spite of pronouncements by experts. “Blaming descriptive linguists for children’s illiteracy is like blaming physicists for children’s inability to ride bikes,” comments Jonathon Owen of the Arrant Pedantry blog. Pullum likewise points out in an essay in the Chronicle of Higher Education that it is not his responsibility as a linguist to prevent changes to English, even if he could, but “to formulate accurate generalizations” about how it functions.36

  Owen explains in another post that “linguists love facts.” They are therefore inclined to dismiss grammar prescriptions that are based on spurious facts and faulty assumptions. Linguists, he says, are not necessarily against prescribed rules, but those rules should be based on evidence, not personal taste.37 Traditionalists are no more accepting of these arguments than they have ever been. They believe in keeping to the principles first laid down in the classic grammar books.

  Eighteenth-century grammar books have persisted as a force in American life. Their rules may be archaic and seldom followed. They may be based more on the whims of a single grammarian than the real usage of any period. For many people, however, knowing them still serves as a benchmark of education and culture. Quite a few Americans still operate with grammatical attitudes that harken back to the days of the early republic, when grammar study and moral behavior were tightly entwined. For them, a command of standard grammar is more than a practical skill—it is also a virtue.

  All the same, we may be entering a period when grammatical rigidity gives way to a greater appreciation of how Americans really talk. While the Internet offers sticklers unprecedented opportunities to lay down the law, it’s also exposing more people than ever before to expert discussions about language and grammar. Battles that once played out mainly between specialists now take place in the public arena. Anyone with online access can join in. One result is that more people are coming around to the idea of a grammatical standard that’s closer to current speech. In other words, Americans may finally be catching up with Noah Webster.

  Notes

  1. GRAMMAR FOR A NEW COUNTRY

  1. For details of the lecture series, including the price, see John Thomas Scharf, A History of Baltimore, City and County (Philadelphia: Louis H. Everts, 1881), 224, 544. Money values in this chapter are based on Samuel H. Williamson, “Seven Ways to Compute the Relative Value of a U.S. Dollar Amount, 1774 to present,” MeasuringWorth, http://www.measuringworth.com/uscompare/ (accessed November 19, 2012).

  2. Webster recorded details of his trip in his diary for 1785, incorporated in Emily Ellsworth Fowler Ford, comp., Notes on the Life of Noah Webster, vol. 1 (New York, 1912), 123–45.

  3. Scharf, History of Baltimore, 224.

  4. Quotations from Webster’s first lecture are taken from Noah Webster, Dissertations on the English Language (Boston: Isaiah Thomas & Co., 1789), his published version of the lecture series.

  5. Along with grammar reform, spelling reform would remain one of Webster’s most fervent causes. His 1828 dictionary featured dozens of simplified spellings, although most never caught on. Two that did were omitting the u in words like honour and favour, and dropping the final k from words like publick and musick.

  6. Ford, Notes on the Life of Noah Webster, vol. 1, 100.

  7. Quoted in Allen Walker Read, “American Projects for an Academy to Regulate Speech,” PMLA 51 (December 1936), 1143–44.

  8. John Adams to president of Congress, September 24, 1780, The Revolutionary Diplomatic Correspondence of the United States, vol. 4 (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1899), 67.

  9. Noah Webster, A Grammatical Institute of the English Language, Part I (Hartford: Hudson & Goodwin, 1783), quoted in Ford, Notes on the Life of Noah Webster, vol. 1, 61.

  10. Charlotte Downey, introduction to Thomas Dilworth, A New Guide to the English Tongue [1740] (Delmar, NY: Scholars’ Facsimiles & Reprints, 1978), vi.

  11. Robert Lowth, A Short Introduction to English Grammar [1775] (Delmar, NY: Scholars’ Facsimiles & Reprints, 1979), 95. Lowth did not include this rule in his first edition, but added it later.

  12. Ibid., 96.

  13. Ibid. Italics are Lowth’s.

  14. Ibid., viii.

  15. Ibid., 1.

  16. Dilworth, New Guide to the English Tongue, 99; Lowth, Short Introduction to English Grammar, 14.
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br />   17. Noah Webster, A Grammatical Institute of the English Language, Part II (Hartford: Hudson & Goodwin, 1784), 3.

  18. Lowth, Short Introduction to English Grammar, 126.

  19. Dilworth, New Guide to the English Tongue, 154.

  20. Freeman’s Journal, 25 April 1787, quoted in Richard J. Moss, Noah Webster (Boston: Twayne, 1984), 10.

  21. J. Hammond Trumbull, The Memorial History of Hartford County, Connecticut, 1633–1884, vol. 1 (Boston: Edward L. Osgood, 1886), 632.

  22. The description of Yale’s food comes from Ford, Notes on the Life of Noah Webster, vol. 1, 22. Other descriptions of life at Yale come from Brooks Mather Kelley, Yale: A History (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1974), 41–42, 78–81.

  23. Quoted in Ford, Notes on the Life of Noah Webster, vol. 1, 31.

  24. Ibid., 18–19 n.

  25. Ibid., 33.

  26. Ibid., 42.

  27. “Memoir of Noah Webster LLD,” 7, quoted in E. Jennifer Monaghan, A Common Heritage: Noah Webster’s Blue-Back Speller (Hamden, CT: Archon Books, 1983), 26.

  28. Noah Webster to John Canfield, January 6, 1783, quoted in Ford, Notes on the Life of Noah Webster, vol. 1, 58.

  29. Joel Barlow to Noah Webster, August 31, 1782, quoted in Ford, Notes on the Life of Noah Webster, vol. 1, 55.

  30. Price from Ford, Notes on the Life of Noah Webster, vol. 1, 59 n. Sales figures are from Henry Steele Commager, preface to Noah Webster, The American Spelling Book [1831] (New York: Teacher’s College, Columbia University, 1962).

  31. Webster, Grammatical Institute, Part II, 7; Dilworth, New Guide to the English Tongue, 87. The second Webster quotation is from the 1800 edition, 5.

  32. Webster, Grammatical Institute, Part II, 79.

  33. Webster, Grammatical Institute, Part II, 1800 edition, 70–71.

  34. Webster, Grammatical Institute, Part II, 87.

  35. Noah Webster to Timothy Pickering, January 20, 1786, quoted in Ford, Notes on the Life of Noah Webster, vol. 1, 148 n.