22. Mathews, Words, 116; Gould, Good English, 85.
23. The number of newspapers is taken from Eric Foner, Give Me Liberty! 2nd ed. (New York: W. W. Norton & Co., 2009), 346.
24. Henry Alford, quoted in Gould, Good English, 9–10; news story quoted in White, Words and Their Uses, 29.
25. Both articles are found in the New York Herald, November 10, 1869, 10.
26. Gould, Good English, 7; White, Words and Their Uses, 28, 30, 31.
27. “The English of the Newspapers,” Nation, December 28, 1865, 814–15.
28. James Parton, The Life of Horace Greeley, Editor of the New York Tribune (New York: Mason Brothers, 1855), 266, 274.
29. Horace Greeley, Recollections of a Busy Life (New York: J. B. Ford, 1868), 84.
30. Ibid., 137.
31. Although this advice is usually attributed to Greeley, he claimed that he never said it. Several sources credit John B. L. Soule, editor of the Terre Haute Express, with originating the phrase, but exactly where it appeared first is unclear.
32. “Gov. Seymour as a Liar,” April 9, 1868, 4.
33. “Mr. Greeley as a Gentleman,” Round Table, April 18, 1868, 244.
34. Untitled article, New York Times, April 17, 1868, 4.
35. Untitled article, New York Tribune, April 18, 1868, 6.
36. Circulation figure is from Ruth E. Finley, The Lady of Godey’s: Sarah Josepha Hale (Philadelphia: Lippincott, 1931), 57. Quotation is from Finley, 144.
37. Sarah Josepha Buell Hale, Manners: Or Happy Homes and Good Society All the Year Round [1866] (Boston: J. E. Tilton, 1868), 34, 329.
38. White, Words and Their Uses, 179; Mathews, Words, 113.
39. “Editor’s Table: Grammatical Errors,” Godey’s Lady’s Book, August 1857, 177; Hale, Manners, 37.
40. “Editor’s Table: Plain Writing and Fine Writing,” Godey’s Lady’s Book, September 1871, 278.
41. “Editor’s Table: Euphemisms and Vulgarisms,” Godey’s Lady’s Book, August 1871, 181–82; “Words under Ban,” May 1871, 474.
42. Gould, Good English, 22; “Grammatical Errors,” Godey’s Lady’s Book, August 1857, 177.
43. Walter R. Houghton et al., American Etiquette and Rules of Politeness, 21st ed. (Chicago: Rand McNally, 1889), 82.
44. William Swinton, New Language Lessons: Elementary Grammar and Composition [1877] (New York: Harper & Bros., 1885), iii.
45. Ibid., 2.
46. Thomas W. Harvey, A Practical Grammar of the English Language (New York: Van Antwerp, Bragg and Co., 1868), 206, 173, 179.
6. THE SCIENCE OF GRAMMAR
1. Richard Grant White, “Words and Their Uses: The Author’s Humble Apology for Having Written His Book,” Galaxy, June 1871, 786.
2. “Words and Their Uses” Part I, College Courant, January 19, 1870, 303.
3. Richard Grant White, Words and Their Uses, Past and Present [1870] (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1881), 23–24.
4. “Words and Their Uses” Part II, January 26, 1870, 320; Part VI, December 24, 1870, 384.
5. “Words and Their Uses” Part II, January 26, 1870, 320.
6. “Words and Their Uses,” Part VIII, January 14, 1871, 13.
7. William Dwight Whitney, Essentials of English Grammar [1877] (Delmar, NY: Scholars’ Facsimiles & Reprints, 1988), 160.
8. “Words and Their Uses” Part VII, January 7, 1871, 1.
9. “Words and Their Uses” Part IX, January 21, 1871, 25.
10. “Words and Their Uses” Part X, January 28, 1871, 38.
11. White, “Words and Their Uses,” 789–90, 792.
12. Ibid., 798, 799, 800.
13. William Jones, “The Third Anniversary Discourse, delivered February 2, 1786,” in The Works of Sir William Jones, vol. 3 (London: John Stockdale, 1807), 34.
14. The p/f alternation is part of a much broader pattern of sound changes that occurred in Germanic—the parent of English, German, Dutch, and the Scandinavian languages—after it broke away from Indo-European. This pattern is named Grimm’s Law after its discoverer, Jacob Grimm of fairy tale fame.
15. Noah Webster, A Dictionary of the English Language [1828], vol. 1 (London: Black, Young, and Young, 1832), ix.
16. Fitzedward Hall, Recent Exemplifications of False Philology (New York: Scribner, Armstrong & Co., 1872), 2–3.
17. Ibid., 7–8.
18. Ibid., 31.
19. Ibid., 53.
20. Ibid., 67.
21. Ibid., 100, 112.
22. Ibid., 113.
23. ”False Philology,” Old and New, July 1873, 110; unsigned review of Recent Exemplifications of False Philology, American Church Review, October 1, 1873, 620.
24. [William D. Whitney], “Hall’s ‘Exemplifications of False Philology,’” Nation, February 15, 1873, 334, 335.
25. Richard Grant White, “Punishing a Pundit,” Galaxy, October 1873, 439, 441.
26. Ibid., 444–45, 446.
27. Richard Grant White, “Punishing a Pundit: Conclusion,” Galaxy, December 1873, 792.
28. Richard Grant White, “Linguistic and Literary Notes and Queries,” Galaxy, May 1875, 670.
29. Richard Grant White, Galaxy, January 1874, 92, 95.
30. Richard Grant White, Every-Day English (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1880), ix.
31. Fitzedward Hall, “English Rational and Irrational,” Nineteenth Century, September 1880, 424.
32. Whitney, Essentials of English Grammar, v.
33. Ibid., 3, 4.
34. This number is taken from Charlotte Downey’s introduction to the facsimile edition of Essentials of English Grammar, 5.
35. Reed and Kellogg were not the first to think of sentence “mapping.” In 1847 Stephen Watkins Clark published A Practical Grammar: In Which Words, Phrases, and Sentences are Classified according to Their Offices, and Their Relation to Each Other (New York: A. S. Barnes). Clark diagrams sentences using a system of circles around words and phrases, along with connecting lines. These are more difficult to interpret than Reed-Kellogg diagrams and never caught on.
36. Alonzo Reed and Brainerd Kellogg, Higher Lessons in English (New York: Clark & Maynard, 1878), 146, 147, 191.
37. The number of editions comes from Charlotte Downey’s introduction to the facsimile edition of Higher Lessons in English (Delmar, NY: Scholars’ Facsimiles & Reprints, 1987), 5. For some discussion of modern diagramming trends, see Kitty Burns Florey, Sister Bernadette’s Barking Dog (Hoboken, NJ: Melville House, 2006).
7. GRAMMAR FOR A NEW CENTURY
1. The description of Theodore Roosevelt’s inauguration is based on reports in “Roosevelt Hero of a Brilliant Day,” New York Times, March 5, 1905, 1; “The Spectator,” Outlook, March 11, 1905, 627–28; Rev. John Bancroft Devins, D.D., “Washington Welcomes a Mighty Host to Witness the Magnificent Pageant,” New York Observer, March 9, 1905, 295–96; Frederick E. Drinker and Henry Mowbray, Theodore Roosevelt: His Life and Work (Washington, D.C.: National Publishing Co., 1919), 186; Nathan Miller, Theodore Roosevelt: A Life (New York: William Morrow and Co., 1992), 17–22.
2. New York Times, March 5, 1905, 1.
3. Outlook, March 11, 1905, 628.
4. William Bayard Hale, “‘Friends and Fellow-Citizens’—Our Political Orators of All Parties and the Ways They Use to Win Us,” World’s Work, April 1912, 676.
5. Maurice Garland’s introduction to Theodore Roosevelt, Roosevelt’s Writings (New York: Macmillan, 1920), xxxiii; Irving C. Norwood, “Exit—Roosevelt, the Dominant,” Outing, March 1909, 724.
6. A list of Theodore Roosevelt’s books can be found at the National Park Service Web site for the Theodore Roosevelt Birthplace, www.nps.gov/thrb/historyculture/booksbytr.htm.
7. Lyman Abbott, “A Review of President Roosevelt’s Administration,” Outlook, February 27, 1909, 430.
8. Theodore Roosevelt, Presidential Addresses and State Papers, vol. 6, January 16, 1907, to October 25, 1907 (New York: The Review of Reviews, 1910), 1359; Theodore Roosevelt, “The Thraldom of Na
mes,” Outlook, June 19, 1909, 395.
9. Miller, Theodore Roosevelt, 523, 529; Hale, “Friends and Fellow-Citizens,” 677.
10. Hale, “Friends and Fellow-Citizens,” 678–79; Theodore Roosevelt, Newer Roosevelt Messages, vol. 3 (New York: Current Literature, 1919), 1075.
11. Nick Carter Stories, no. 121, January 2, 1915, 2.
12. William Dean Howells, A Hazard of New Fortunes, vol. 2 (New York: Boni & Liveright, 1889), 26.
13. George Ade, Fables in Slang (New York: Grosset & Dunlap, 1899), 63–74.
14. Louise Pound, “The American Dialect Society: A Historical Sketch,” Publication of the American Dialect Society no. 17, April 1952, 5, 6.
15. “The Point of View,” Scribner’s, July 1909, 250.
16. “The Folly of Taught Grammar,” Atlantic Monthly, February 1908, 283.
17. “Word-Coining and Slang,” Living Age, July 13, 1907, 115, 116.
18. Ambrose Bierce, “Some Sober Words on Slang,” Cosmopolitan, July 1907, 335.
19. Amanda Greer Kendig, “Slang,” Herald of Gospel Liberty, May 26, 1910, 652; “Life’s Black List of Slang Words,” Life, August 1, 1912, 1525; “A Safeguard against Slang,” Youth’s Companion, March 12, 1908, 127.
20. Thomas R. Lounsbury, The Standard of Usage in English (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1908), vii.
21. Ibid., 2–3.
22. Ibid., 83–84.
23. Ibid., 85–86.
24. Ibid., 98, 100.
25. Unsigned review of The Standard of Usage in English, Banker’s Magazine, June 1908, 962; “Standard Usage in English,” Independent, July 16, 1908, 148.
26. “English by the Standards of Use and Wont,” Dial, July 1, 1908, 16–17.
27. Leila Sprague Learned, “A Defense of Purism in Speech,” Atlantic Monthly, May 1913, 682, 683.
28. “It’s me,” Nation, February 10, 1910, 132, 133; letter to the editor, Nation, February 24, 1910, 186.
29. “The Infinitive Mood,” Critic, July 20, 1895, 45.
30. “The Infinitive Again,” Critic, August 3, 1895, 80.
31. “The Split Infinitive Again,” Critic, August 24, 1895, 121.
32. “How to Not Read,” Critic, January 1900, 33.
33. Lounsbury, The Standard of Usage, 248.
34. Ibid., 267, 268.
35. “Correct Speaking and Writing,” Ladies’ Home Journal, March 1903, 45; May 1903, 39.
36. E. B. White, “Letter from the East,” New Yorker, July 27, 1957, 36.
37. William Strunk, Jr., The Elements of Style (Geneva, NY: Press of W.P. Humphrey, 1918), “Introductory.” All quotations are from the online edition of the book found on www.bartleby.com/141/.
38. White, “Letter from the East,” 36.
39. Strunk, Elements, “Elementary Rules of Usage,” rule 1; “Elementary Principles of Composition,” rule 11.
40. Strunk, Elements, “Elementary Principles of Composition,” rules 12, 13, 18.
41. E. B. White to Allen Strunk, quoted in Mark Garvey, Stylized (New York: Touchstone, 2009), 12.
42. White, “Letter from the East,” 36.
43. Ibid., 36, 43.
44. E. B. White to Jack Case, November 3, 1958, quoted in Garvey, Stylized, 70.
45. William Strunk, Jr., The Elements of Style, with revisions, an introduction and a new chapter on writing by E. B. White (New York: Macmillan, 1959), 52–53.
46. Ibid., 69–70.
47. Ibid., 46, 48.
48. Ibid., x–xi, 33.
49. E. B. White to Jack Case, December 17, 1958, quoted in Garvey, Stylized, 101.
50. Ibid., 102.
51. John T. Frederick, “Speaking of Books,” Rotarian, September 1959, 37; untitled review, Analysts Journal, November 1959, 101–2.
52. Charles Poore, “Books of the Times,” New York Times, June 9, 1959, 35.
53. Untitled review, New Yorker, June 20, 1959, 119.
54. The sales figure is taken from Garvey, Stylized, 84.
55. Strunk, Elements, rule 11; letter quoted in Garvey, Stylized, 118–19.
56. Letters quoted in Garvey, Stylized, 137, 202.
8. THE PERSISTENCE OF GRAMMAR
1. Details of the press release are taken from David Skinner, The Story of Ain’t: America, Its Language, and the Most Controversial Dictionary Ever Published (New York: Harper, 2012), 10–11, and Herbert C. Morton, The Story of Webster’s Third: Philip Gove’s Controversial Dictionary and Its Critics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), 166–68.
2. McCandlish Phillips, “Webster Soups Up Its Big Dictionary,” New York Times, September 7, 1961. Most of the newspaper and magazine articles addressing the Webster’s Third controversy that appeared between 1961 and 1962, including most of those cited here, are collected in James Sledd and Wilma R. Ebbitt, Dictionaries and That Dictionary: A Casebook on the Aims of Lexicographers and the Targets of Reviewers (Chicago: Scott, Foresman, 1962).
3. “It Ain’t Necessarily Uncouth,” Chicago Daily News, September 9, 1961.
4. “The Death of Meaning,” Toronto Globe and Mail, September 8, 1961.
5. “It ‘Ain’t’ Good,” Sunday Star, September 10, 1961.
6. New York Times, November 30, 1961; Richmond News Leader, January 3, 1962, 22; National Review, February 13, 1962, 98.
7. “Webster’s New Word Book,” New York Times, October 12, 1961.
8. “A Non-Word Deluge,” Life, October 27, 1961, 4; “Say It ‘Ain’t’ So,” Science, November 10, 1961, 1493.
9. Wilson Follett, “Sabotage in Springfield,” Atlantic, January 1962, 73–77.
10. Sydney J. Harris, “Good English Ain’t What We Thought,” Chicago Daily News, October 20, 1961.
11. The English Language Arts, prepared by the Commission on the English Curriculum of the National Council of Teachers of English (New York: Appleton-Century-Crofts, 1952), 277, 278.
12. Philip B. Gove, “Linguistic Advances and Lexicography,” Word Study, October 1961, 8.
13. Philip Gove to G. & C. Merriam Company, February 12, 1946, quoted in Morton, The Story of Webster’s Third, 34. Gove discusses his view that different speaking styles are valid for different speakers, depending on their social situation, in Brooks Atkinson, “Webster Editor Disputes Critics; Says New Dictionary Is Sound,” New York Times, March 1, 1962.
14. Philip B. Gove, “A Letter to the Editor of The New York Times,” New York Times, November 5, 1961.
15. Philip B. Gove, “A Letter to the Editor of Life Magazine,” Life, November 17, 1961, 13.
16. Roy H. Copperud, “English as It’s Used Belongs in Dictionary,” Editor & Publisher, November 25, 1961, 44.
17. “Dictionary Dithers,” America, November 18, 1961, 236; “On New Words and New Meanings,” St. Louis Post Dispatch, December 17, 1961; “The Latest Word,” Reporter, April 12, 1962, 14.
18. Bergen Evans, “But What’s a Dictionary For?” Atlantic, May 1962, 58.
19. Ibid., 59.
20. Ibid., 62.
21. Bergen Evans, “Noah Webster Had the Same Troubles,” New York Times Magazine, May 1962, 77.
22. Dwight MacDonald, “The String Untuned,” New Yorker, March 10, 1962, 130.
23. Ibid., 150.
24. Ibid., 159.
25. William Allan Neilson, editor-in-chief, Webster’s New International Dictionary of the English Language, 2nd ed. (Springfield, MA: 1934), v, 1. Sledd’s article is quoted in Morton, The Story of Webster’s Third, 211.
26. Springfield Union, February 19, 1962, quoted in Morton, The Story of Webster’s Third, 223.
27. Percentages are taken from Thomas J. Creswell, Usage in Dictionaries and Dictionaries of Usage, Publication of the American Dialect Society (Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 1975), 28.
28. “Dr. Philip B. Gove, 70, Is Dead; Editor of the Webster’s Third,” New York Times, November 17, 1972, 50.
29. Patricia T. O’Conner, Woe Is I (New York: Riverhead Books, 1996), 10; Bryan A. Garner, Garner’s Modern Ame
rican Usage (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003), 470.
30. O’Conner, Woe Is I, 183; Mignon Fogarty, QuickandDirtyTips.com, http://www.quickanddirtytips.com/education/grammar/ending-a-sentence-with-a-preposition (accessed April 15, 2014); Garner, Modern American Usage, 633.
31. For some discussion of this issue, see Geoffrey K. Pullum, “Economist Still Chicken: Botches Sentence rather than Split Infinitive,” Language Log, June 11, 2013, http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=4680.
32. “Happy Birthday, Strunk and White,” New York Times online, April 24, 2009, http://roomfordebate.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/04/24/happy-birthday-strunk-and-white/ (accessed February 4, 2014).
33. Geoffrey K. Pullum, “The Land of the Free and The Elements of Style,” English Today 102, June 2010, 34, 35, 43.
34. Michael Bulley, “Defending Strunk and White,” English Today 104, December 2010, 57, 58.
35. Ryan Bloom, “Inescapably, You’re Judged by Your Language,” New Yorker online, May 29, 2012, http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/books/2012/05/language-wars-descriptivists.html; “Lynne Truss Has a Grammatical Axe to Grind,” Telegraph, January 5, 2014, http://www.telegraph.co.uk/journalists/lynne-truss/10547372/Lynne-Truss-has-a-grammatical-axe-to-grind.html.
36. Jonathon Owen, “Lynne Truss and Chicken Little,” Arrant Pedantry, January 13, 2014, http://www.arrantpedantry.com/2014/01/13/lynne-truss-and-chicken-little/; Geoffrey K. Pullum, “Not Cricket,” Chronicle of Higher Education, January 28, 2014, http://chronicle.com/blogs/linguafranca/2014/01/28/not-cricket/.
37. Jonathon Owen, “What Descriptivism Is and Isn’t,” June 4, 2012, http://www.arrantpedantry.com/2012/06/04/what-descriptivism-is-and-isnt/.
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