Who cares about National Grammar Day? Or is it whom?

[Neal Whitman]

My take on why linguists shouldn't boycott Arnold's granddaughter's
birthday, uh, National Grammar Day. (But happy birthday to Opal!)
http://literalminded.wordpress.com/2010/03/04/why-the-heck-am-i-observing-national-grammar-day-anyway/

Point #4 in the post: Linguists love grammar, so why leave this (admittedly
gimmicky and corny) day to be observed only by the linguistically ignorant?

Neal Whitman
Email: nwhitman at ameritech.net
Blog: http://literalminded.wordpress.com

> ---------------------- Information from the mail
> header -----------------------
> Sender: American Dialect Society
> Poster: Dennis Baron
> Subject: Who cares about National Grammar Day? Or is it whom?
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> There's a new post on the Web of Language:
>
> Who cares about National Grammar Day? Or is it whom?
>
> March 4 is National Grammar Day. According to its sponsor, the Society
> for the Promotion of Good Grammar (SPOGG, they call themselves, though
> between you and me, it's not the sort of acronym to roll trippingly
> off the tongue), National Grammar Day is "an imperative . . . . to
> speak well, write well, and help others do the same!"
>
> The National Grammar Day website is full of imperatives about correct
> punctuation, pronoun use, and dangling participles. In the spirit of
> good sportsmanship, it points out an error in the Olympic theme song,
> "I believe," which contains the phrase the power of you and I (that's
> a common idiom in English, even in Canada, plus it rhymes with fly in
> the previous line of the song, but SPOGG would prefer that Olympians
> sing you and me). There's even a link to vote for your favorite
> Schoolhouse Rock grammar episode (hint: unless you prefer grammar
> rules that have nothing to do with the language people actually speak,
> don't pick "A Noun is the Name of a Person, Place, or Thing").
>
> The National Grammar Day home page has even got its own grammar song
> available for download, though it's of less than Olympic quality, and
> the site also boasts a letter of support from former Pres. George W.
> Bush, apparently SPOGG's poster child for good grammar, who writes
> that "National Grammar Day . . . can help Americans prepare for the
> challenges ahead." To be sure, Bush wrote that before the grammar
> bubble burst. The growing number of grammarians filing first-time
> unemployment claims suggests that the former president was wrong about
> this, as he was about most things.
>
> read the whole post on the Web of Language: http://bit.ly/weblan
>____________________
> Dennis Baron
> Professor of English and Linguistics
> Department of English
> University of Illinois
> 608 S. Wright St.
> Urbana, IL 61801
>
> office: 217-244-0568
> fax: 217-333-4321

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