“She knows now that being obstructionist and secretive don’t work.”
–Maureen Dowd, New York Times, February 17, 2008
“She don’t know what she’s talking about.”
–My father, frequently, 1905 to 1983
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Someone accused me recently of being “hung up” on grammar. Yes, I was as surprised as you are. Hung up? Me?
Contrary to legend, I do not go around gratuitously correcting the common person’s speech. Not aloud, in any event.
While I may have cringed every time I heard my father use a plural verb with a singular noun or pronoun, I never corrected him. Yes, there was an element of self-preservation there, but it was more than that. Even at a young age, I understood that correcting someone’s use of language is, in most circumstances, not polite.
Note the important qualifier “in most circumstances.” My father was not a Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist for the New York Times who reveled in the clever use of words; he did not live to find le mot juste that would send readers running for their dictionaries.
Had he been such a person, I would have expected him to grasp simple grammatical concepts like noun-verb agreement. I would have expected him to write, for example, that “being obstructionist and secretive doesn’t work.”
Maybe it seems harsh to call Ms. Dowd on the carpet for one grammatical error. Fair enough. Except that there seems to be a pattern. Consider this statement from an earlier column: “Surely the Goracle . . . must stew about all the time and money and good will that has been wasted . . . .”
Let’s see: time and money and good will (or, perhaps, goodwill). By my count, those are three things. And they are three discrete things, not combinations like “hue and cry” or “corned beef and cabbage” that are rightly treated, for grammatical purposes, as singular entities. When I read the offending sentence to my eight-year-old daughter—who also has yet to score her first Pulitzer—she recognized the error immediately.
This is not, however, an anti-Dowd essay. I actually like Maureen Dowd, in very small doses. (Unfortunately, one column usually is too large a dose.) And, after all, she is a very busy woman: she has to write two columns a week! It’s nasty work.
Moreover, she is not the only offender. No, the problem of noun-verb disagreement is nothing less than an epidemic among the literati. Although Ms. Dowd errs in both directions—singular noun with plural verb, plural noun with singular verb—the clear trend among other writers is toward the latter. Indeed, the words “are,” “were,” and “have” appear headed for extinction.
For example: the Honorable Bruce Selya, Circuit Judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the First Circuit, is known for his masterly (masterful? look ‘em up and tell me) use of language. Judge Selya recently offered this comment about his writing on the website wordsmith.org: “My love of language and my approach to judicial opinion writing is controversial in some circles.”
Why yes, they certainly are controversial in these circles. With friends like Judge Selya, what need hath our language for enemies? If one is going to cultivate a reputation as a linguaphile, shouldn’t one understand the lingua one is philing?
If Mr. Selya were, say, the starting left fielder for the Red Sox, one might wave this off as just another case of “Bruce being Bruce.” Left fielders don’t need to have perfect grammar. But his job is to write things that make sense. If he bungles the equivalent of “Dick and Jane are running”—when he’s writing specifically about language!—what confidence can we have in the logic of his Due Process Clause opinions?
Now, let me say this. There may well be times when The Johnston Papers will not hew strictly to the grammatical straight and narrow. In informal writing, certain rule-bending idiomatic expressions are considered acceptable. And that’s not just me talking. (Hey! There goes one right now!) Everyone agrees, don’t they? (Look! Another one!)
These usages are the equivalent of the first basemen’s pulling his foot off the bag a split second before the ball arrives, or the shortstop’s floating a few inches above second base as he turns the double play. The play is made, so a little fudging is forgiven. No big deal.
But the goofs I’m talking about are tantamount to dropping a routine fly ball—or, perhaps, not even knowing what to do with a fly ball. That is something we would never tolerate from our hypothetical left fielder. Okay, bad example, but you get the point.
Back to the news media. Ms. Dowd is not the only Times writer who is number-challenged. Not long ago, the paper’s star political reporter, Adam Nagourney, wrote this: “But their voice is going to be diminished as Mr. McCain and the rest of the field heads into the crush of contests over the next two weeks.” Oof.
Nor is it limited to the Times. An editorial in a leading New Hampshire newspaper last week said, “High food prices and a slow-growing public appreciation for food that’s locally grown . . . has caused home and market gardens to proliferate.”
These are not typos, and they’re not aberrations. This is simply how newspaper people write these days. They think it’s normal. Read any newspaper thoroughly for a week, and I guarantee you’ll find at least a dozen examples.
These people are paid to write. It’s all they do. If a person’s working hours are devoted to fixing cars or balancing books, a non-conformist approach to grammar may be tolerated. For that matter, someone who spends his time solving international crises (or creating them) might be forgiven for asking, “Is our children learning?”
But when you write sentences for a living, shouldn’t you understand first-grade grammar? If a surgeon studies all the information he’s given and then removes the wrong kidney, he can expect a lawsuit. Why should writers be immune from accountability?
Negligent infliction of grammatical distress. I like it. I’m sure I can find a lawyer to take my case. Hmm—better stay out of the First Circuit.
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This just in—another New Hampshire paper is heard from: “But an unstable housing market nationwide and a 2.7 percent drop in Manchester’s property values from 2006 to 2007 has Cornell keeping a watchful eye out for tax abatement requests to jump back up.”
Get me out of here.
