atw: Re: "50 Years of Stupid Grammar Advice"

No, actually, they do: A Student's Introduction to English Grammar
<http://www.amazon.com/Students-Introduction-English-Grammar/dp/05216128
88/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1239935375&sr=1-1>  by Rodney
Huddleston and Geoffrey K. Pullum (Paperback - Mar 14, 2005)
 
Check Amazon. They have written a competitor to EOS, so when I saw that
I kind of suspected it was a bit of a shot at the EOS in order to bump
up sales of his own book. I sniff a conflict of interest about the
article.
 
Regards,

Warren 


 

________________________________

From: austechwriter-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
[mailto:austechwriter-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Stuart
Burnfield
Sent: Friday, 17 April 2009 11:34
To: Austechwriter
Subject: atw: Re: "50 Years of Stupid Grammar Advice"


Hi Geoff -

I think 'EOS versus desk-thudder' is really what's on offer. Pullum
doesn't offer an alternative to EOS, and that curious 'lifetime of
serious study' business at the end of the article suggests to me that he
would be uncomfortable with any _little_ book. (Though to be fair,
elsewhere he has good things to say about Joseph Williams's _Style:
Toward Clarity and Grace_.)

Prescripto versus descripto: I would class myself as a moderate
descriptivist, but I'm very comfortable with the perceived bossiness of
EOS. The shorter the book, the less room there is for hedging and
explaining. If I wrote a long book on technical writing it would be
infused with the spirit of "It depends", but if I wrote a five-page
writing guide for engineers, it would necessarily contain don't-do-this
prescriptions and sound bossy. It's not because I think my guidelines
have the force of laws of physics.

I agree with your recommendation of Crystal and Peters. I thoroughly
enjoyed Crystal's _The Stories of English_ and the first third of
Peters's _The Cambridge Guide to Australian English Usage_ (no spoilers,
please!).

Stuart

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