AS a self-confessed practising pedant, I thoroughly enjoyed reading Helen Mead’s recent article (Sentenced to grammar pain, The Press, August 16).
My particular thanks to Helen for the opportunities that she thereby offered me to nit-pick to my heart’s content.
Firstly, her husband’s quotation from Winston Churchill - “something up with which I will not put” - has clearly been misunderstood by him (and probably by his teachers), since our former prime minister, a most elegant and knowledgeable writer of English, was undoubtedly using this tortuous concoction in order to scorn, and not to recommend, the so-called rule about never ending a sentence on a preposition.
Secondly, a similar point to that made by Churchill applies to the ‘requirement’ about the ‘split infinitive’, a term of condemnation invented in the 19th century by grammarians who seemed to wish to impose Latinate forms on a far more flexible language.
The infinitive in English nearly always comprises two words and can therefore have other words, commonly adverbs, inserted without any problem and often to telling effect, as in the prime example that Helen quotes: ‘to boldly go’.
Lastly, would she please apologise to the Queen or else provide proof in terms of examples of our esteemed monarch’s misuse of the phrase “my husband and I”? Between you and me, among other things, I have yet to hear Her Majesty use it other than correctly.
Clive Goodhead,
Rowley Court,
Earswick, York
Grammar gripes resonated with me
I always enjoy Helen Mead’s articles (as much now as I did your previous columnist Sue Nelson) but her article “Sentenced to grammar pain” (August 16) really resonated with me.
I have similar scenarios with my husband too. He went to grammar school, I did not. That said, I feel lucky I went to a really good senior school and I always enjoyed both English
grammar and English
literature, mostly due to the enthusiasm of my teachers.
I don’t always get it right, but the current trend of saying “would of” or “could of” instead of “would have” and “should have” is not only incorrect, but it grates when I see it or hear it.
I’m sure Helen would agree with me.
Sylvia Greenaway,
Wistow, Selby
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