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Accidence Will Happen: The Non-Pedantic Guide to English Usage, by Oliver Kamm
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- Sales Rank: #587590 in Books
- Published on: 2015-02-12
- Original language: English
- Number of items: 1
- Dimensions: 7.32" h x 1.14" w x 5.31" l, 1.19 pounds
- Binding: Hardcover
Most helpful customer reviews
0 of 0 people found the following review helpful.
Literally (yes, literally) exploding with delights
By Edward Durney
Professional pedant Oliver Kamm provides no pedantry in his new book Accidence Will Happen. Indeed, although the author writes a column called "The Pedant" in The Times (of London) on English language usage, he reveals here that the title of his column is meant as a joke. (Don't worry, Americans -- this book covers both American and British English, which Kamm calls two dialects of the same language.)
This book is full of jokes. (Though the author being British, it's humour not humor.) This book is no joke, though, as it discusses some serious English usage conventions and even delves into some grammar. So this book is both informative and helpful. But it's also in good fun -- Kamm has a forgiving spirit. Like to boldly split your infinitives? Have at it, says Kamm. Ignorant of when to use "that" and when "which"? Doesn't matter, says Kamm. Use that which sounds better to you.
Kamm shows the power of language used carefully. One evidence is the title of this book, which comes from a perfectly grammatical and delicious plum of a pun that Kamm's mother Anthea Bell created when she translated the comic book Asterix the Gaul. Though I had not known it (and my spellchecker flags it), accidence is a word, and it means the part of grammar that deals with the inflections of words.
This book, according to Kamm, is intended as "a source of advice and an argument about language." And the book serves as both. Lots of advice and lots of arguments, although the arguments are not argumentative but instead expository and insightful. In fact, the book is split into two parts to address argument and advice. Part 1 covers Kamm's view of English usage, while Part 2 sets out a list of disputed usages. Part 1 is mostly argument, and Part 2 mostly advice.
The argument in Part 1 takes direct aim at strict grammarians. Pedantic people, like H.W. Fowler -- original author of Fowler's Modern English Usage, are panned. (Though, in Fowler's case, not completely, as Kamm says he is a reader and fan of Fowler. But only when he's witty, not schoolmarmish.) Sensible souls with style, like Steven Pinker -- author of The Sense of Style, are praised. (And it is thus no accident that Steven Pinker provided a blurb for the front cover and a longer blurb for the book's front pages.)
There's lots of advice in Part 2 that will set language mavens' heads exploding. Literally exploding. Because this book says it's fine to use "literally" as an intensifier rather than to mean "literal meaning." And there's no grammar rule broken by a supermarket saying "ten items or less" for its express checkout lane. Hopefully, people will feel more comfortable using the words they feel most comfortable using. (Like "hopefully".)
That's the message of this book. Even if you think you do not know English grammar, if you are a native speaker of English, you do know grammar. We all mastered many complex grammatical constructions as we mastered the English language. So we should stop worrying so much about pendants and their pedantry and continue to speak and write how we think is correct. That is how English remains vibrant and growing.
Still, pay attention to style and convention. Those are important. But worry most about what you can do with language, using usage and style conventions to make your points clear, powerful and persuasive (while not sounding stupid, of course). Not about grammar nits that may be prohibited by prickly and pious pedants.
"Above all," Oliver Kamm says, "language is interesting. Pedantry isn't." His book proves that.
6 of 7 people found the following review helpful.
Wonderful book but use with caution
By Inna Tysoe
This is probably the only grammar book that will make you chuckle and for that reason alone it’s well worth reading. This book advances an argument about the English language well worth reading. Briefly it is this: English, the world’s lingua franca, is very much a living language. As such it is forever evolving and there is no “wrong” English language; put simply English is what we say it is. English is English usage. The very idea of improper English arose not to promote clear communication but to preserve the social class of the bourgeoisie. And in that cause, the grammarians have attempted to impose their ridiculous rules of grammar on the classic writers of the English language including Shakespeare, Milton, Austen, and the Bible. (This is not an exhaustive list.) If we truly aim to be clear then we need to narrow, not expand, the gap between the spoken and written English. And that is what Kamm advocates. That we write, as much as we can, the way we would speak; that “we find our voice."
I agree with much of this argument. I think that the best way to learn a language is to read the classics. (But then I am biased as the classics were my English education.) I also think that when a grammarian spends many, many pages listing rules showing that his or her English usage is right whereas that of the Bible and George Eliot leaves much to be desired, there is a problem. Not with the Bible; with the pompous grammarian. I agree too that the issues over which the pedants spill so much apoplectic ink are not terribly interesting. The debates over whether it is “appropriate” to use whomever or whoever or whether enormity can only mean something bad as opposed to something huge are not the least bit interesting. And they are not made more interesting when the pedants’ essentially command the hapless reader to go memorize their rules. Kamm is right about all that. But I also think there is a sense in which Oliver Kamm goes too far.
Kamm is a self-confessed former pedant. And like many converts, he is a bit dogmatic about his new faith in a democratic English. For example, he quotes (approvingly) Emma Thompson’s injunction against using “innit” because “it makes you sound stupid.” His point is that innit is idiomatic English but that this idiom, if used in a statement of qualifications for example, is unlikely to impress a potential employer. It is, as Oliver Kamm would say, a question of register.
But that means that the rules of Standard English (those boring rules expounded by those boring pedants) are worth knowing. For only if you take the time to learn (and by learn, I mean memorize) the difference between the transitive and intransitive verb will you be able to look up (in a dull grammar book, likely written by a pedant) whether or not a particular verb takes an object. And only then will you always be able to write an essay in the appropriate register.
Kamm himself gives an example of why this is necessary. He describes an instance of when he first started his working career with the Bank of England and was tasked with analyzing a thorny issue. He labored over the analysis which was sent to upper management. Upper management returned the analysis with a comment on a hanging modifier. Now, Oliver Kamm’s tells this story as a way of lampooning the pedants of this world. But when I read this anecdote I nodded in recognition.
You see, I work in a large corporation and am frequently tasked with providing upper management with analyses of many a thorny issue. And my analyses will not go anywhere if there is a hanging modifier. In my case, when I am at work, the proper register is the pedant’s register. If I don’t know the rules (whether these rules are nothing more than superstitions or not), I can’t do my job. It’s as simple as that.
When I write for my blog, however, my writing changes. There I am mostly concerned with clarity. And not just with any kind of clarity; I am concerned with writing in a way that accurately portray the kind of person I am (so I want to write in my own, not a bureaucratic voice) and I want to write in a way that will hopefully draw the reader in. So when I write a blog post I naturally follow Oliver Kamm’s advice and try, to the extent possible, to narrow the distance between spoken and written English.
As a result, my prose in my blog is far clearer (IMO) than my prose at work. Kamm is absolutely right about that. And if you read his book for advice on how to make your prose clearer, then it is absolutely sound advice.
But remember: how you write (and whether you should follow Kamm’s advice) will very much depend on your audience.
0 of 0 people found the following review helpful.
A good book about how English should be: not a book about how it is.
By NigELT
A fun read and informative throughout but more philosophical than educational. The author is opposed to pedantry, and he has a point. Sadly in the UK one is still judged by how one uses English and there are undoubtedly employers and others in positions of importance who will quibble about the difference between "uninterested" and "disinterested".The powerful are right, even when wrong and their views carry more weight than those of the majority: undemocratic but true. Further, many exams actually test knowledge of what I would call more conventional English and as such this is not a book for exam takers.
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