June 02, 2013

Kryptonite for grammar nazis

This book, which will cost you $0.02 on Amazon at the moment, thanks to a motivated seller or two, solves most usage problems instantly.  Copperud compares views on usage from Fowler's and various dictionaries, and often adds additional quotations and citations of his own.  The section on "who" vs. "whom" is priceless:  it runs two pages of small type, all of it indispensable, including this choice bit:
These sentences illustrate the commonest "misuse" of whom.  Yet when the critics of such errors must indict the translators of the Bible, together with Keats and Shakespeare, as having known no better, their preachments take on a hollow ring...  The consensus is that either "who" or "whom" is acceptable in these constructions.

We will not see its like again, at least not from the estimable Mr. Copperud, who, alas, passed away in 1991.

1 Comments:

Blogger VMM said...

I usually just respond to grammar Nazi-ism with this link:

http://stuffwhitepeoplelike.com/2008/05/12/99-grammar/

June 3, 2013 at 7:09 AM  

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