Comic by XKCD Post by Natalia Real
I wonder: what is the point of the tiring litany of rules in [the English] language? Do we really need so many styles: AP, APA, MLA, Harvard, and so on? Why do we capitalize I but not you?
What is the big deal with all these rules? Shouldn’t our priority be simply to get the point across?
For many years I quietly accepted and followed the sometimes stark differences in writing, punctuation, citation, etc. styles in my various types of writing and editing. The AP Stylebook was my bible and was later joined by the MLA Style Guide. I acquiesced to switching back and forth between them and didn’t question it or complain. I was a stickler, in truth. I was known as the “copyediting Nazi” in one of the newsrooms I worked at.
Lately, however, I have come to feel annoyed toward the arbitrary and unstable validity of these authoritarian demands on how I must express concepts through written language.
Why is it okay for me to employ commas in traditionally incorrect ways in fiction but not in academic writing? Why can E. Annie Proulx get away with sentences such as, “He looked for something to bail out the water; nothing” and “He worked the tiller, traced curves” in The Shipping News while William Strunk, Jr. and E. B. White twitch and roll over in their graves? Why can I violate certain grammar rules in blog posts but not in professional journalistic articles? And why do dead white men get to dictate how so many of us must write, anyway?
It always feels delightful to blow off the rules I so diligently abide by during working hours. For instance: “She turned away, glanced at the ice cream in her wine glass” is beautiful, I don’t care what the dead white guys say.
It’s like taking off a tight skirt, foot-deforming high heels, a business suit, a corset, a veil—and getting into stretchy, soft sweatpants and walking around barefoot. It’s liberating ourselves from oppressive, immobilizing restraints (speaking of which, I am an adamant opponent of heels and uncomfortable garments).
And if it feels delicious to break free from these rules and if nobody can offer a logical reason why we must continue respecting them—I call mutiny!
Why do we even wear what Colette Guillaumin denounced as tools of torture? Elements that only succeed to limit us, hinder us, dominate us? Some may claim that rules provide necessary structure and guidance. I say you can acquire these things some other way—via inspiration, desire, or making a list of possibilities, cutting them into strips, tossing them into a hat, and picking one out! There is profuse evidence that neglecting stringent grammar rules does not harm the quality of writing: Cixous, Artaud, Giovanni, Cummings, the aforementioned Proulx.
And while hardly anyone uses further vs. farther, less vs. fewer, and whom correctly (which, okay, I admit: still miffs me a bit) it usually doesn’t make the text any less coherent—which I believe should be the deciding factor.
What’s so awful about the passive voice or ending a sentence with a preposition if the meaning and its coherence remain the same? It’s not as atrocious as forming the possessive singular of a noun and neglecting to add ‘s, e.g. Davis’ cup instead of Davis’s cup. Just kidding.
“[We] generally accept that values are socially constructed and historically acquired, but [we] seem to think they must nonetheless be preserved,” says Christine Delphy in her essay “Rethinking Sex and Gender,” a statement we can apply to our purposes as we rethink the rules of language.
Language is alive, constantly evolving—any day now you’ll find “pwned” in the dictionary. And why shouldn’t changes involve rules for using dashes vs. commas? Also, I like including foreign language in my prose (you heard me, Strunk and White!). It grants it a certain je ne sais quoi.
And speaking of a new paradigm, I for a while now have wanted to devise a satisfying substitute for the lengthy he or she/she or he and the unpalatable s/he in addition to him or her/her or him (as he and him alone is clearly out of the question). What about seh and hur? So far, ze and hir, among others, have been suggested.
I alas do not know enough people making a true effort to take part in this revolution. It is not an easy path to take alone without support. But when “allowed” to express myself freely, I will happily work toward revolutionizing language.
Will you join me?
Natalia Real has been a writer, copyeditor, translator, and slave to various style guides since 2002. Help her brainstorm a world of gender neutral pronouns where dichotomies are obsolete, and much more.