Grammar is Dead, Long Live Grammar

[Slava]

A rather fun column from The Atlantic, griping about how English is undergoing certain changes. I agree with all, except for the end of #7. I rather approve of this way of avoiding the awkward "he or she" formulation.

[Perry Lassiter]

Loved it! And read all the comments, which are hilarious! I think they may be funnie than we are! Should we invite them all in?

[Slava]

Loved it! And read all the comments, which are hilarious! I think they may be funnie than we are! Should we invite them all in?

Invite away, but please make sure you include the r.

[bnjtokyo]

I'm sorry, but credibility disappeared after "First sentence we conjugated*"

[Perry Lassiter]

I wonder whether "conjugate" in some places equates our use of "diagramming." Someone in that discussion used"parsing" the same way. To me, you parse nouns. But my frosh yr in high school the teacher used "substantive" to refer to both nouns and adjectives, something I've never seen anywhere else. It did alert me that even grammar teachers varied among themselves.

[Slava]

The way I understand it, diagramming a sentence is the actual drawing of the lines showing how the sentence parses.

The author of the article has also posted an update, apologizing for the conjugation error. He was taken to task by several readers for that one.