Good points

[brightlotusmoon]

Delightful, fascinating, and illuminating.
http://chronicle.com/free/v55/i32/32b01501.htm: 50 Years of Stupid Grammar Advice

Comments

[todabrilla.livejournal.com]

That was a great article. I have never read Elements of Style, but, like everyone in academia, I lived in its shadow while in grad school. I remember papers marked with red for violating some of Strunk's rules (do not start a sentence with "however", etc). At the time I was surprised because none of these seemed to be incorrect to me based on my past experience. In retrospect, it seems that the biology department professors had absorbed these capricious and often incorrect rules and stuck to them. Then I took a science writing course. I was overwhelmed at first because I thought I could go with what I knew about writing. That turned out to be a bit of a shock. The teacher was an absolute Elements of Style Nazi who presumably dreamed in proofreading marks (if you didn't use the correct mark then even a correct mark while editing a piece would get you in trouble).

[brightlotusmoon.livejournal.com]

There were times when I wanted to hurl that book out a window and never read another copy, but it was required reading for all the classes I needed to take in order be a writer. In general, I followed Strunk and White's rules, but I enjoyed breaking them in small ways when I wrote fiction.

It bothers me when people, especially teachers, become evangelical and zealous about a specific text. Your description made me giggle.

[chiyo-no-saru.livejournal.com]

Oh, split infinitives. So abused!

[chiyo-no-saru.livejournal.com]

(Abused in the sense that no one likes them, that is.)

[brightlotusmoon.livejournal.com]

:)

The poor split infinitive is indeed a solicism: a grammatical mistake or absurdity. The most famous split infinitive is, of course, "To boldly go where no one has gone before." I sometimes wonder if split infinitives will always permeate our language despite the abuse...
(But I still like them!)

[jimmy-book.livejournal.com]

This is very interesting! It's nice to read something that doesn't treat White like a grammar God. His writing style was very precise, but it wasn't complex or daring.

[brightlotusmoon.livejournal.com]

White was never my favorite anyway. ;)