First of all I want to be clear I am genuinely asking a question.
As a person who suffers from dysgraphia I have received a significant amount of very well intended advice from prescriptive grammarians. And while I do try hard to be sensitive to the pain of reading my posts by these individuals I have always been curious about something.
Note that I only have difficulties with writing, it is probably best described as mentally editing written text, and reading the intended text while reviewing. But due to attempts to make my written word more palatable to a wider audience I also notice these errors more often when reading.
While I am reluctant to mention any rule to avoid this thread turning into a grammar debate I have noticed that several classic authors like Daniel Defoe and Shakespeare are full of these pitfalls.
Do those of you who identify as prescriptive grammarians enjoy reading the classics? Or does it make your skin crawl to run across these common errors.
If it does bother you can you make exceptions for poets like e e cummings as an artistic stretching of the rules?
Contrary to what you say, I find far fewer grammatical blunders in the classics. Dickens, Kipling, Hughs, Collins, Thackeray, Garland, and the lot: their grammar is extremely good.
They would never, for instance, use “passed” when the proper word is “past.” (I saw that blunder, just today, in a professionally published book.)
I like the classics; they are classics for a reason, after all!
Even James Fennimore Cooper, for all his many faults (Mark Twain really ripped him to shreds!) is a very clear writer, with a scholarly mastery of grammar. His characterization is infantile, but his writing is of a high technical standard.
No…I think I have to argue against your premise!
ETA: And, yes, I certainly give extra latitude to poetry.
For me reading Shakespeare is almost like reading a foreign language, in that I have to translate a bit as I go along. Even so I find it worth the effort.
I did get confused by the obviously well-organized thoughts in your posts coupled with the grammatical errors, but now that I have looked up ‘dysgraphia’ I understand a little better. I was thinking that maybe English wasn’t your first language, as is the case with some other posters here.
Thank you for your reply, and I am actually glad to hear it is not an issue. It would seem to be a tough lot to draw if you were so passionate about language that it blocked your enjoyment of the classics.
I wonder it would also depend on how strict and which standard of language you prefer.
To provide an example, the k->hw->wh words tend to have pretty complex use cases, because there is little connection to spelling and the sound, also due to their age and what I assume is difficulties with latin->english mapping of rules they tend to have complex use cases. As an example the who vs whom rules.
As only a few regions still pronounce wh, and as I am not Irish or from the south it is one of those “exceptions” to watch for.
While not nearly as informal as during the Chaucer era, I do see what would be improper uses peppered through Shakespeare, which is not unexpected as John Dryden was not even born until two decades after Shakespeare had passed.
Under the most common rules this would be an improper use.
And here is an example from Defoe.
(I apologize for pasting the common examples but I wanted to use a vetted transcription)
As a funny side note, I personally find it curious that “ss” inside or at the start of words bothers me when reading modern typesetting after spending time with a vintage book that use the long s.
It is pretty obscure and is typically used to describe motor problems. I would never take offense from someone not understanding it.
I have actually enjoyed learning the history of various rules, and it has also lead to some very interesting conversations.
I had once passionate grammarian explain how she sees words as colors. She painted such a incredibly vivid image of a beauty that I could not see. I wish we would have recorded her description but we would never have had that experience had she not tried to correct me on which witch is which.
It would have been just as difficult for her to shut off that part of her as it is for me.
Oddly enough, my high school english teacher thought I was reading another book when I was laughing during an assigned reading of the taming of the shrew. I don’t know if she was more concerned or just annoyed when she realized I was laughing because I was getting jokes that she wasn’t
Anyway, thank you for sharing your experience in life.
All books that the major local religion decided were not “uplifting wholesome and promotes good thoughts.” would have been removed from our access so it would have been fairly novel and I was a freshman.
To Kill a Mockingbird, The Color Purple, Of Mice and Men, Catch 22, and even Ulysses were banned.
Luckily my father used the banned book list as his christmas shopping list later in high school.
I read a lot of classic literature. You’ll find that the more you read the more familiar you’ll become with the styles and idioms of different centuries. I’m reading Gibbon’s Decline And Fall at present and his prose is absolutely masterful, a sheer delight. He never ‘breaks Priscian’s neck’ as mistakes in grammar used to be termed after the sixth-century Roman grammarian Priscianus.
How is “going to seek the grave / Of Arthur, whom they say is kill’d to-night / On your suggestion.”
an improper use grammatically? Here’s the sentence without the line breaks:
“Besides, I met Lord Bigot and Lord Salisbury, with eyes as red as new-enkindled fire, and others more, going to seek the grave of Arthur, who they say is kill’d to-night on your suggestion.”
I guess it should be “whom they say is killed tonight”, but that’s a minor enough quibble that all but the most pedantic are willing to overlook. (I would also, probably, if I were editing the sentence for clarity, get rid of the word tonight. The Bastard knows that Arthur died tonight, John knows that Arthur died tonight, and what the Bastard is trying to warn John about is that Lord Bigot and Lord Salisbury think that John ordered him killed. The tonight is unnecessary. But, you know, it’s Shakespeare.)
I hate to break it to you, but in many cases that’s because editors have modernized and standardized the text. For example, in the first book of Paradise Lost, as originally spelled, we have:
and
It’s probably true that there are relatively few grammar errors as such, but this will be true in any text written by a native speaker. Genuine grammatical errors (like beginning a sentence “I are…”) are rare; errors in spelling, punctuation, and usage are much more common.
My experience is that with classic works even the public domain versions have been quite thoroughly copy-edited so that I run into very few obvious errors.
I am not a prescriptive grammarian, but I do think that we have grown lax in the level of mechanical editing we require printed material to undergo. I know that I would be happy to pay a few more bucks for a copy of a book that isn’t going to make me fume about misplaced commas and jarring homophone errors.
True…and so what? How does that make my answer wrong? I enjoy reading the classics, and consider the grammar as we have received it from editors to be superior to much that is written today.
Would that more modern writers had the benefit of such editing!
I also interpreted your original comment as saying that writers of the past were naturally more gifted in their handling of spelling and usage than modern writers. I appreciate the clarification.
I do believe this. (Not “naturally,” but by their education.) Editing is not the entire reason the classics are as polished as they are today. You’re fallaciously extrapolating “some” into “all.”
Dunno. Maybe, or maybe not. But Fretful Porpentine was probably right that some of the few remaining typos and other minor errors in Faulkner and Twain have, over the decades, been edited out.
I did not consider that option but I also tend to seek out reprints of the earlier texts. But the above mentioned “long s” would probably be a blocker for many readers.
To clarify spelling and grammar rules were not fully settled during this time, while the were standards for the upper class some rules would not have even existed until the formal study of grammar happened, particularly the ones that were borrowed from latin despite the fact that they were new to english.
As an example here is a split infinitive:
“We are such stuff as dreams are made on; and our little life is rounded with a sleep.”
As most people are probably not willing to pay more for editions like the Norton Facsimile here is an online image version of one of the early “first folios”
I’ll blame you for my desire to delay chores tonight to compare a actual wording of a modern version with my norton facsimile copy.
