My 9-year-old was confused when he spotted my copy of Geoffrey K. Pullum’s latest book, The Truth About English Grammar, in our kitchen: “You’re still learning about grammar?” It’s a fair question. I’m well out of school and have spent much of my professional life as an editor.
But yes, I do still brush up on grammar fundamentals once in a while, and Pullum’s slim and pleasant new volume proves a useful way of doing so. It’s brief and readable, yet doesn’t shy away from the maze of technical terms and arcane debates that have plagued every attempt to catalog the rules of our language.
After all, the rules of grammar encompass so much more than the handful of basic concepts and common mistakes most high-school English teachers drill into their students these days. They’re much more complicated than “nouns refer to things and verbs refer to actions.” And for all the anxiety about grammatical errors, native English speakers follow the important rules without even thinking about it — effortlessly constructing sentences that are as intricate as needed to express any given thought.
Continue reading the entire piece here at the Washington Examiner (paywall)
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Robert VerBruggen is a fellow at the Manhattan Institute. Follow him on Twitter here.
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