Grammar Resources for Writers
Grammar: "That department of the study of a language which deals with its inflexional forms or other means of indicating the relations of words in the sentence, and with the rules for employing these in accordance with established usage" (Oxford English Dictionary).
Grammar and usage carry high stakes in writing and speaking: errors or departures from convention can have a serious impact on a writer's clarity and/or credibility. This is particularly true in academic settings.
How to Fix the Most Common Errors
Stanford professor Andrea Lunsford has identified the twenty most common grammar and usage errors in writing by university students. This page will tell you what they are and how to fix them.
Readings for the Grammar-phile
Among those interested in it, grammar incites heated and often learned debates and it provokes powerful emotions in many readers. These links will take you to a few of the lively conversations on the subject:
- Mignon Fogerty (Stanford Biology M.A.) is Grammar Girl. Her podcast covers the most common as well as the most vexing grammar issues. Of particular interest: her Top Ten Grammar Myths
- Dennis Baron, Professor of English and Linguistics at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and author of the still-current masterpiece Grammar and Gender (Yale 1986), has a blog on things grammatical and linguistical: the Web of Language. A recent post treats comma-scapegoating in Salon magazine; another lampoons Mignon Fogerty (see above)
- The New York Times hosts a range of debates about grammar, mostly plaintive jeremiads that see the end of civilization in the shift from "every day" to "everyday" (this is an error that often may be found in the pages of the Times)
- Louis Menand joins the punctuation wars in his acerbic review of Lynn Truss's best-selling book Eats Shoots & Leaves: The Zero-Tolerance Approach to Punctuation (Gotham 2004)
- Gary A. Olson is Provost and Vice-President for Academic Affairs at Idaho State University. He has authored several scholarly books and edited or co-edited a dozen more. He is the author or co-author of nearly fifty scholarly articles, and served as editor of the prestigious JAC: Journal of Advanced Composition. He is a frequent contributor to the Chronicle of Higher Education. And he maintains the website Punctuation Made Simple (http://punctuationmadesimple.org)
Research on Grammar
The late Robert J. Connors once called it "the various bodies of knowledge and prejudice called 'grammar.'" For more on the knowledge part, see below:
Connors, Robert J., and Andrea A. Lunsford. "Frequency of Formal Errors in Current College Writing, or Ma and Pa Kettle Do Research." College Composition and Communication 39.4 (Dec. 1988): 395-409.
Lunsford, Andrea A. and Karen J. Lunsford. "'Mistakes Are a Fact of Life': A National Comparative Study." College Composition and Communication 59.4 (Jun. 2008): 781-806. [read the full article here]
Stanford's own Andrea Lunsford, Louise Hewett Nixon Professor of English, is a leader in the study of error in writing. Her long-term quantitative research has revealed shifting patterns of error as technologies and rhetorical situations change. Among Professor Lunsford's findings (summarized on the Bedford/St. Martin's website):
- student papers today are longer and more complex than they were 20 years ago, yet there has been no significant increase in the overall rate of error
- although word-processing tools have advanced substantially, they are responsible for the most common error in student writing today: using the wrong word, spelled correctly.
Williams, Joseph M. "The Phenomenology of Error." College Composition and Communication 32.2 (May 1981): 152-168.
Why do some grammatical errors seem to cause so much venom and rage? Why is a misuse of the word "hopefully" considered an "atrocity"? Joseph M. Williams examined this question in his still-current 1981 article "The Phenomenology of Error." Williams is also the author of Style: Ten Lessons in Clarity and Grace(Longman).
What do you think of when you think of the word "grammar"? Laura Micciche argues most people think of formal grammar: "Usually, our minds go to those unending rules and exceptions, those repetitive drills and worksheets..." (720). This formal grammar is "the deadly kind of grammar," the one that makes us anxious. Drawing on Martha Kolln's idea of "rhetorical grammar," Micciche argues that grammar doesn't have to be deadly: it can give a writer more powerful choices, and thus make writing and communicating more satisfying and more pleasurable.
Connors, Robert J. "Grammar in American College Composition: An Historical Overview." The Territory of Language: Linguistics, Stylistics, and the Teaching of Composition. Ed. Donald A.McQuade. Carbondale: Southern Illinois UP, 1986. 3-22.
Robert J. Connors, who co-authored Andrea Lunsford's early research on the frequency of error, also studied the history of English grammar instruction in the United States. When did American schools switch from teaching Latin grammar teaching English grammar? Who invented and popularized sentence-diagramming? How did the rise of structural linguistics in the 1950s affect ideas about grammar? In his inimitable style, Connors treated these questions and more.
Hartwell, Patrick. "Grammar, Grammars, and the Teaching of Grammar." College English 47.2 (1985): 105-127.
Their is four errors in this sentance. Can you find them?
