Sunday, October 05, 2008
Giles Coren Is Still A Prick
Although it wasn't one of my favourite moments of the just recently finished series of The Wire, I enjoyed the two scenes in which examples of the proper use of the verb 'to evacuate' were provided; first, to a reporter who had wrongly written that some number of people were evacuated, rather than the building they were occupying, and second, to a policeman who didn't understand that McNulty meant the homeless murder victim he was standing over had shat himself after being killed. This, I think, should be borne in mind when considering the complaint I am about to make. I recently recieved copy-edited proofs of a piece of writing I did. Now, I know that my writing can be rather convoluted, my meaning somewhat opaque, and so some manglings I am prepared to forgive: they were probably there in the first place, and in attempting to untangle them they only get wound more tightly. Nonetheless, some things aren't matters of style, but of basic grammar. Not understanding the difference between a foolish hope and a hope of foolishness is one, and thinking that it is acceptable to begin sentences of written English with 'but' is another. Grumpy old man interlude now over.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
17 comments:
If starting a sentence with 'and' is acceptable (which I believe it is, though not generally to be encouraged), then I would have thought 'but' also acceptable.
And (!), as for 'hope of foolishness', it's grammatical. But (!) probably not what you meant.
Is this the BIS piece?
I'm pretty sure hope of foolishness - which isn't, for obvious reasons, (one of) the phrase(s) that was copy-edited - does mean what I think it does. A foolish hope is the hope of someone who is foolish and a hope of foolishness is the hope of someone who hopes for foolishness. Nor is it acceptable to begin sentences with 'and', in formal written English at least.
I couldn't help noticing a sentence beginning 'But...' in the academic text I'm currently reading.
One of the points about standards is that they can be broken. PPA apparently thinks it is acceptable to let Sam Freeman use 'most' instead of almost - as in 'most all', rather than 'almost all'. I find this quite reprehensible, and that PPA does it does not make it any less reprehensible.
That sounds pretty weird.
How about this example: 'But for Zabaleta's red card, Man City might have held on for a win'?
I think that's fine, but that's a different use of 'but', I think. Normally, you don't follow 'but' with 'for', but there you do. Usually, 'but' serves to qualify or negate the clause that precedes it, whereas there it indicates some kind of sufficiency condition.
Less pedantically, Skrtel - or whoever it was who kicked Jo right in the middle of his back when going up for a header - should have followed Zabaleta off, and although I'm not sure that Zabaleta's sending off was enough to lose Man City the game, losing a centre-half would probably have been enough to stop Liverpool winning it.
I'd rather have had Skrtel sent off than seriously injured. I'm not sure how much longer we'd have been playing with ten men for in that case; but we did end up doing so after his injury (because we'd used 3 subs) and scored the winner in that time.
I think, although I can't remember, that the kick was at 2-1, which would have made more difference I think. How long will you lose him to injury? How many games is a straight red for violent conduct?
http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport1/hi/football/teams/l/liverpool/7654483.stm
They've confirmed it's posterior cruciate ligament damage, but not yet how bad it is. Could be anywhere between a month and a year according to wild guesses I've heard...
Starting a sentence with 'and' is fine with Austen, Shakespeare and William Blake, amongst others. If these chaps don't get included in a definition of "formal written English", why bother?
I would have thought it would be obvious that in the context of a discussion about copy-editing academic articles, 'formal written English' would not include messianic poetry, love sonnets, or Elizabethan plays, thus ruling out Shakespeare and Blake. As for Austen - who I at least would be reluctant to describe as a 'chap' - I would need examples, although a decent case could be made that deft Georgian comedies of manners would not use 'formal written English' in the relevant sense either.
Sir, you are right. Those writers are too lowbrow. What have they to do with the evolution of the rules of the English language?
How about the King James Bible, to begin at the beginning: Of the first 31 verses, only two DO NOT begin with "And..."
Irrelevant! you say. Anachronistic!
Speaking of beginning at the beginning, Under Milk Wood: opening paragraph - "And all the people of the lulled and dumbfound town are sleeping now."
Something more contemporary? Today's Guardian editorial? Second sentence, "And..." Ah, you say. The Grauniad has notoriously lax standards of English.
May I counter with examples from within groping distance of my kitchen table? The October 20th copy of the New Yorker: James Surowiecki "But..." page 20, John Updike "And..." page 45. Too American I hear you cry!
How about the October 22nd edition of the TLS: Karl Miller on Rodge Glass's biography of Alasdair Gray, last line - "But his heart belongs to Glasgow."
Concede Sir! Who is it that's doing this acceptable formal written English? Where are they doing it? The people should be told.
Enough, I must go for a nosh.
JP
John Rawls! A Theory Of Justice! Chapter One! Page Six! "And finally,..."!
Apologies, I may be getting a little carried away.
JP
I didn't say they were lowbrow, I said they weren't, in the relevant context, formal written English. Poetry is not (usually) formal written English. Journalism isn't either. Further, that rules get broken doesn't show that they're not rules. More than that, can you not take a joke?
It's a pretty poor refuge to ask "can't you take a joke?", when you haven't, in fact, made one. I put loads in!
While I admire your nimble attempts to reject any example I give as either a bending of the rules or as insufficiently formal for your context, you leave a falsification problem: are there any examples I could give which could change your mind? No, because you will always be able to say "that rules get broken doesn't show they aren't rules." No matter who wrote the example or how formal the context was. The only way to convince you would be to read the rulebook...
...May I suggest the acknowledged authority on English usage, the Burchfield edited Fowler's Modern English Usage. As far as formal written English goes, this is the rule book. There is no higher authority. What do you think Fowler says? Read it, it's hilarious. A typically witty passage: "The widespread public belief that But should not be used at the beginning of a sentence seems to be unshakeable. Yet it has no foundation." Lol!
Of course rules can be broken perfectly legitimately for stylistic reasons - indeed, that can be the only explanation for what you are prepared to do to the humble comma (see! I made a joke!).
Yours in pedantic good humour,
JP
Self-congratulatorily piling up irrelevant examples is not a joke. What I meant by asking whether or not you could take a joke pointed to a) the idea that you shouldn't take posts which end with 'grumpy old man interlude now over' particularly seriously and b) the idea that you shouldn't take posts which criticise someone for an error the author then self-mockingly admits having made themselves in a later post particularly seriously.
You may have me with Rawls - I don't have my copy to hand, so I can't check - and I've already admitted to Ben above that there are uses of 'but' which it is pefectly acceptable to use to start sentences in the relevant register, so I don't have a falsification problem. Even if I did have a falsification problem, this would only be a problem if you had what I understand to be a now-discredited Popperian account of the content of propositions, which I don't.
Well that's fair enough, I'm not nearly as hilarious as I think I am, but I put in a Giles Coren reference for a joke. Did I even raise a smile?
Ad hominem attacks apart, may I ask if you still think it's a basic rule of grammar that you can't begin a sentence with 'but' or 'and', and if so, where I might find this rule?
Yours in conciliation,
JP
Post a Comment