I have mixed feelings about the Oxford Comma.
Partly because some people don’t know how to use it, but also because I don’t care how people use it. It’s a measly comma, for heaven’s sake.
But there are people out there who make a big deal about the Oxford Comma.
Which may be part of the reason I was watching radio show co-hosts, Rebecca Kruth and Ann Curzan, talk about the correct past tense for the verb “snowblow”.
I agree with Ms. Kruth. The correct past tense of “snowblow” is: “shoveled.” (Like Ms. Kruth, I don’t own a snowblower.)
Co-host Ann Curzan suggested the best past tense is, “I used the snowblower”. That might be considered cheating, but apparently, the radio show hosted by Ms. Kruth and Ms. Curzan is not so much about following the linguistic rules, as it is about the rules we invent when we ain’t following the rules.
Ms. Curzan is dean of the College of Literature, Science and the Arts at the University of Michigan, and she contends, in her new book — Says Who? A Kinder, Funner Usage Guide for Everyone Who Cares About Words — that virtually every grammar or vocabulary ‘no-no’ you learned from Miss Thistlebottom is wrong or out of date.
In olden days, a grammatical slip was looked on as something shocking, but now, it would seem, almost anything goes.
Any college dean who uses the word “Funner” in her book title is my kind of college dean.
Nevertheless, for the grammar Nazis among us, the barbarians always seem to be pounding on the castle gate, threatening to annihilate proper usage… irregardless of how We the People actually talk.
According to reviews of Ms. Curzan’s book, (which I have not yet read) she reminds us that context and social situation should always be considered, when we write, or speak. Adjust your words to your audience. You wouldn’t talk to your boss in the same way you talk to your children… or the way you try to chat up an attractive stranger in a bar.
(Things get more complicated, of course, if you are trying to chat up an attractive boss in a bar. But I take it, Ms. Curzan doesn’t address those types of awkward but tantalizing situations.)
From a recent critical review of her book by Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist Michael Dirda, in the Washington Post:
Curzan repeatedly emphasizes that language evolves, that we should welcome change, that new words express new ideas and thoughts. No one would argue otherwise. Yet rules define any game. Without them, games wouldn’t even exist. Similarly, the traditional principles of sentence structure, verb agreement and even spelling ensure effective and clear communication. Grammar helps us to say what we mean and others to know rather than guess what we’re talking about.
I have to disagree with Mr. Dirda, as presumptuous as that may be. (Never having won, myself, a Pulitzer Prize.) Grammar doesn’t help us say what we mean. Grammar defines our social class, and the region of the country where we grew up and learned to talk. Sure, rules are important when you’re playing a game, like maybe baseball, or poker. But I would never use the rules for baseball while playing poker. Nor while chatting up my attractive boss in a bar.
I grew up and learned my speech patterns in the Great American West, where there’s hardly anything funner that criticizing East Coast book critics who think their version of English grammar is the version of English grammar.
And why is it still called “English” grammar? Haven’t we been our own country for 248 years? About time, I think, that we started teaching our kids “American Language Arts” instead of “English Language Arts”.
By the way, the Oxford Comma (in case you were wondering) is the comma that comes near the end of a comma-delineated list. Like the one after the word “eraser”:
Please bring a pencil, eraser, and notebook.
Note: Oxford is in England.
AP style — defined by The Associated Press Stylebook, the style guide that American news organizations sometimes adhere to — does not use the Oxford Comma. The above sentence in AP style would look like this:
Please bring me a pencil, eraser and notebook.
Talk about old fashioned! Who uses a pencil and an eraser any more?
It’s 2024, folks. Please bring me a laptop, or an iPhone.
Underrated writer Louis Cannon grew up in the vast American West, although his ex-wife, given the slightest opportunity, will deny that he ever grew up at all.