grammar

We Keep Us Grammatical

Editor’s Note: This article was originally published by Law & Liberty on June 6, 2024. It is crossposted here with permission. We keep us safe” is a progressive mantra. At Princeton, for example, this statement, plus an exclamation point, heads the tweet with the “Princeton Gaza Solidarity Encampment Community Guidelines” that Princeton Israel Apartheid Divest (@PtonDivestNow) posted on […]

Read More

Vague-Talking and the Loss of English

In the mid-1980s, American English was overwhelmed by a linguistic mutation that transferred the burden of verbal communication fraom speaker to listener.  Because it sidestepped the need for vocabulary and clarity, and because its shapeless syntax shielded speakers from the risk of saying something insensitive or incorrect, this new mode of expression won rapid acceptance, jumping […]

Read More

Writing Teachers: Still Crazy After All These Years

After spending four depressing days this month at a meeting of 3,000 writing teachers in Atlanta, I can tell you that their parent group, the Conference on College Composition and Communication, is not really interested  in teaching students to write and communicate clearly.  The group’s agenda, clear to me after sampling as many of the […]

Read More