Stephen Fry: "Context, convention and circumstance are all."

I am officially obsessed with this media form -- that is, typographic animation set to spoken word. And I love that it's so self-referential, that the language-benders are bending language to demonstrate how great language can be when bent.

A lot of my writing time lately has been spent on offline projects. I'll poke my head out on this and the other active blog I've working on right now, but fall always seems to snag me with a huge amount of work. But it's my last quarter as a full-time grad student, so I'm dedicating myself to a new form of caffeine (hello, coffee) and buckling down. But this video and others like it will be my study breaks, to remind me of why I'm doing it all.

A note on the video itself: I love that Stephen Fry distinguishes between lovers of language and the people who are annoying about it and ruin it for everyone. I often find myself frustrated with often-misused words (like the difference between "over" and "more than"), but I am reminded that language evolves, it belongs to no one, and it's no use to squabble over the small distinctions, especially in contexts where other aspects (like substance) are more worthy of focus. The crux of it is here: "Nor does the idea that following grammatical rules in language demonstrates clarity of thought and intelligence of mind." Grammar is a tool we use to communicate effectively, but it is not a mastery of grammar that signals achievement: You still need something substantive to say.

At the same time, grammar is important because, as Stephen Fry says, ignoring it gives the impression that you don't care. "You slip into a suit for an interview, and you dress your language up too." And so while mastering grammar is not the end-all means to achieve good writing, it's still necessary to understand it. It's the framework we've created as a culture, the test to pass to prove you understand not only what to say, but how to say it. "You can wear what you want linguistically and sartorially when you're at home or with friends, but most people accept the need to smarten up under some circumstances. It's only considerate. But that's an issue of fitness, of suitability. It has nothing to do with correctness. There's no right language or wrong language any more than there are right or wrong clothes. Context, convention and circumstance are all."

Hear hear!

The Only Argument You Need for the Oxford Comma

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Twilight

Source: redmudnessa.tumblr.com via Brittany on Pinterest

I would like, if you'll allow, to reclaim the word "twilight." While it was once a beautiful vision of dusk in summer, fireflies and green leaves, the sky tinged pink over the lake -- this once lovely word has been stolen by glittery vampires that enjoy teasing preteen girls. You can see why I'm upset.

I went for a run with my roommate tonight. We left at 7:30pm and ran to Lake Shore Drive, and the skyline came around a corner, and we ran in awe of Chicago, watching the lights glitter on Navy Pier, competing with the Hancock and Sears* Towers for attention. On the way back north we were treated to a sunset over the classy Lakeview architecture. The air felt clear, clean, accommodating. This is twilight.

When I was a kid I would visit my grandparents in the Iowa countryside on a weekly basis. They lived, still live, next to a man-made pond where a family of swans lived in the summertime. We'd play croquet, or go swimming in the pool, or wander around the weeds in between the pond and the corn fields. (Like I said: Iowa.) At night we'd eat dinner on the porch. Dinner included a meat, a potato, a corn on the cob with butter, some fruit, and a glass of milk. We'd eat delicious Midwest dinner and watch the sun set over the little pond with the swans. There were fireflies, and they flitted in the half-lit air. That was twilight.

I say we take it back from these teenage vampire books that have something to do with Mormonism or werewolves or not showing the juicy parts of sex scenes or what have you. We take it back from them and give it to dusk in the summer, to air heavy with sweet scents, to surviving on barbequed meat and watermelon, to playing hard and being lazy. Because that sounds much more likely to get you laid.

* I will never call it the Willis Tower. That's bullshit. It's the Sears Tower. Why do I feel so strongly about this?

For an aggressively inarticulate generation

Check out this short slam poetry piece by Taylor Mali, given the typographical treatment by graphic artist Ronnie Bruce. This is the best 2:45 you'll spend today.

Mali's poem is about speaking with conviction, about not ending every sentence with an uptick, as a question, thereby making you sound unsure of everything you say. (Ya know?) Bruce takes that performance and gives us the actual words, the hidden question marks, the metadiscourse of "like" and "you know." He portrays words as both shy and bold. He makes them into trees and axes. He fits everything together. The poem was poignant and funny and clever to begin with, but Bruce's execution has made it into art.

I love words so much. I think this demonstrates the power they can have if you're competent and you speak with conviction. And with an increasingly "aggressively inarticulate generation" learning literacy via text message and Facebook chat, it's a nice reminder that though language may change, the power it has when used effectively is enduring.

Another edition of me trying to justify my graduate study

This is my textbook for my Language & Style summer class. Doesn't it look super interesting‽ * I especially love the completely unrelated cover art depicting water. Or is that cigarette smoke? Either way, couldn't we find a more interesting way to depict grammar? How about this:


Much better.

Anyway, I'm studying for my test tonight on sentence structure, and I saw this as an opportunity to a) educate the world, b) defend my choice of master's study, and c) procrastinate while actually sort of studying in a way kinda.

Turns out everyone who's been freaking out about English grammar since, er, grammar school is sort of overreacting. This is mostly because we teach grammar really badly. In truth, there are only six possible sentence structures in English. Six. Total. If you want to feel like a grammar gorilla on cocaine -- all-powerful, all-knowing, and sort of depressingly manic -- then lend me just five minutes of your day.** Here's what you need to know:

You are aware, of course, that all sentences include a subject and a verb. "The grammar gorilla likes cocaine." "The grammar gorilla chortles." "The grammar gorilla does not give a crap what you think of his hairdo." All perfectly acceptable American English sentences.

I'm going to give you a chart now, but please don't freak out. You can skip it and come back for reference.

SIX BASIC ENGLISH SENTENCE PATTERNS

be patterns SUBJ-VERB-SUBJECT COMPLEMENT
linking patterns SUBJ-VERB-SUBJECT COMPLEMENT
intransitive patterns SUBJ-VERB
transitive patterns SUBJ-VERB-DIRECT OBJECT
di-transitive patterns SUBJ-VERB-INDIRECT OBJECT-DIRECT OBJECT
complex transitive patterns SUBJ-VERB-DIRECT OBJECT-OBJECT COMPLEMENT

Hi! Okay glad to still have you here. So listed above are the six possible sentence structures in English. I'm going to glaze over the actual definitions and just use a transitive sentence as an example so I can get to the cool part, which is the fact that you can take any of those sentences and make them negative, passive, perfect, progressive, interrogative, or change tense (past/present/future) -- and it REMAINS THE SAME SENTENCE STRUCTURE. So for example:

You like occlupanids.

This sentence contains a subject, a verb, and a direct object (takes the action of the verb; what I like are occlupanids) -- so it's a transitive sentence. Now let's have some fun with it:

You liked occlupanids. (past)
You will like occlupanids. (future)
You don't like occlupanids. (negative)
You are liking occlupanids. (progressive)
You have liked occlupanids. (perfect)
Occlupanids are liked by you. (passive)
Do you like occlupanids? (interrogative)

So we've made seven new sentences that say completely different things -- BUT IT'S STILL THE EXACT SAME SENTENCE STRUCTURE. It's still got a subject, a verb, and a direct object. It's still a transitive sentence.

Is anyone else as bowled over by this as I am? I mean, the sentence element mix-and-match possibilities are literally infinite, and if you know how to boil it down to the basic elements of the sentence -- that is, the form word slots (nouns, verbs, adjectives, and adverbs) as opposed to the structure words (conjunctions, pronouns, prepositions, determiners, etc.) -- then you can create anything. This, my friends, is what I went to graduate school to learn: how to finesse and manipulate sentences. Because, again, that's what writers do. Let's make this sentence as crazy as we possibly can:

Have occlupanids not been being liked by you?
(past passive perfect progressive interrogative)

It's still the same sentence: "you" is the subject, "liked" is the verb, and "occlupanids" is the direct object; we've just thrown a bunch of other elements in there to mess with tense, aspect, positive/negative, and form. Nevermind the fact that there are probably very few opportunities to use a sentence like this. It is grammatically correct, and that's what matters.

For the record, this works for really long sentences too:

Last year, you definitely liked bright green and orange occlupanids despite the fact that my mother's best friend's uncle's sister gave you a huge bag of twist ties for your birthday instead.

All of the information beyond the basic sentence is adverbial; that is, if we stripped it all away, we'd still be left with a grammatical sentence:

You liked occlupanids.

And that concludes our lesson for the day. I hope you learned something. At the very least, you should now know what an occlupanid is.


* Yes, that is an interrobang. No, interrobangs do not get the respect they deserve from English grammarians. Fight the power.
** Satisfaction not guaranteed. But I'm gonna try really hard.

The Origin of the Ampersand

Good morning! Start your Tuesday right with a dose of extraneous information that may prove useful at a cocktail party in about 12 years. I give you: The Origin of the Ampersand.

(Click to make it bigger.)