The Art of Writing and Speaking the English Language ... Grammar & Punctuation by Sherwin Cody

The Art of Writing and Speaking the English Language ... Grammar & Punctuation

 

By Shertoin Cody

 

GENERAL INTRODUCTION

If there is a subject of really universal interest and utility,
it is the art of writing and speaking one's own language effectively.
It is the basis of culture, as we all know; but it is infinitely more
than that: it is the basis of business.  No salesman can sell anything
unless he can explain the merits of his goods in _effective_ English
(among our people), or can write an advertisement equally effective,
or present his ideas, and the facts, in a letter.  Indeed, the way
we talk, and write letters, largely determines our success in life.

Now it is well for us to face at once the counter-statement that the
most ignorant and uncultivated men often succeed best in business,
and that misspelled, ungrammatical advertisements have brought in
millions of dollars.  It is an acknowledged fact that our business
circulars and letters are far inferior in correctness to those of Great
Britain; yet they are more effective in getting business.  As far as
spelling is concerned, we know that some of the masters of literature
have been atrocious spellers and many suppose that when one can sin in
such company, sinning is, as we might say, a “beauty spot”, a defect in
which we can even take pride.

Let us examine the facts in the case more closely.  First of all, language
is no more than a medium; it is like air to the creatures of the land or
water to fishes.  If it is perfectly clear and pure, we do not notice it
any more than we notice pure air when the sun is shining in a clear sky,
or the taste of pure cool water when we drink a glass on a hot day.  Unless
the sun is shining, there is no brightness; unless the water is cool, there
is no refreshment.  The source of all our joy in the landscape, of the
luxuriance of fertile nature, is the sun and not the air.  Nature would be
more prodigal in Mexico than in Greenland, even if the air in Mexico were
as full of soot and smoke as the air of Pittsburg{h}, or loaded with the
acid from a chemical factory.  So it is with language.  Language is merely
a medium for thoughts, emotions, the intelligence of a finely wrought
brain, and a good mind will make far more out of a bad medium than a poor
mind will make out of the best.  A great violinist will draw such music
from the cheapest violin that the world is astonished.  However is that any
reason why the great violinist should choose to play on a poor violin; or
should one say nothing of the smoke nuisance in Chicago because more light
and heat penetrate its murky atmosphere than are to be found in cities only
a few miles farther north?  The truth is, we must regard the bad spelling
nuisance, the bad grammar nuisance, the inártistic and rambling language
nuisance, precisely as we would the smoke nuisance, the sewer-gas nuisance,
the stock-yards' smell nuisance.  Some dainty people prefer pure air and
correct language; but we now recognize that purity is something more than
an esthetic fad, that it is essential to our health and well-being, and
therefore it becomes a matter of universal public interest, in language
as well as in air.

There is a general belief that while bad air may be a positive evil
influence, incorrect use of language is at most no more than a negative
evil: that while it may be a good thing to be correct, no special harm
is involved in being incorrect.  Let us look into this point.

While language as the medium of thought may be compared to air as the
medium of the sun's influence, in other respects it is like the skin of
the body; a scurvy skin shows bad blood within, and a scurvy language shows
inaccurate thought and a confused mind.  And as a disease once fixed on the
skin reacts and poisons the blood in turn as it has first been poisoned by
the blood, so careless use of language if indulged reacts on the mind to
make it permanently and increasingly careless, illogical, and inaccurate
in its thinking.

The ordinary person will probably not believe this, because he conceives
of good use of language as an accomplishment to be learned from books,
a prim system of genteel manners to be put on when occasion demands,
a sort of superficial education in the correct thing, or, as the boys
would say, “the proper caper.”  In this, however, he is mistaken.
Language which expresses the thought with strict logical accuracy is
correct language, and language which is sufficiently rich in its resources
to express thought fully, in all its lights and bearings, is effective
language.  If the writer or speaker has a sufficient stock of words and
forms at his disposal, he has only to use them in a strictly logical way
and with sufficient fulness to be both correct and effective.  If his
mind can always be trusted to work accurately, he need not know a word
of grammar except what he has imbibed unconsciously in getting his stock
of words and expressions.  Formal grammar is purely for critical purposes.
It is no more than a standard measuring stick by which to try the work
that has been done and find out if it is imperfect at any point.  Of course
constant correction of inaccuracies schools the mind and puts it on its
guard so that it will be more careful the next time it attempts expression;
but we cannot avoid the conclusion that if the mind lacks material, lacks
knowledge of the essential elements of the language, it should go to the
original source from which it got its first supply, namely to reading and
hearing that which is acknowledged to be correct and sufficient―as the
child learns from its mother.  All the scholastic and analytic grammar in
the world will not enrich the mind in language to any appreciable extent.

And now we may consider another objector, who says, “I have studied
grammar for years and it has done me no good.”  In view of what has
just been said, we may easily concede that such is very likely to
have been the case.  A measuring stick is of little value unless you
have something to measure.  Language cannot be acquired, only tested,
by analysis, and grammar is an analytic, not a constructive science.

We have compared bad use of language to a scurvy condition of the skin.
To cure the skin we must doctor the blood; and to improve the language
we should begin by teaching the mind to think.  But that, you will say,
is a large undertaking.  Yes, but after all it is the most direct and
effective way.  All education should be in the nature of teaching
the mind to think, and the teaching of language consists in teaching
thinking in connection with word forms and expression through
language.  The unfortunate thing is that teachers of language have
failed to go to the root of the trouble, and enormous effort has
counted for nothing, and besides has led to discouragement.

The American people are noted for being hasty in all they do.  Their
manufactures are quickly made and cheap.  They have not hitherto
had time to secure that perfection in minute details which constitutes
“quality.”  The slow-going Europeans still excel in nearly all fine
and high-grade forms of manufacture―fine pottery, fine carpets and
rugs, fine cloth, fine bronze and other art wares.  In our language,
too, we are hasty, and therefore imperfect.  Fine logical accuracy
requires more time than we have had to give to it, and we read the
newspapers, which are very poor models of language, instead of books,
which should be far better.  Our standard of business letters is very low.
It is rare to find a letter of any length without one or more errors of
language, to say nothing of frequent errors in spelling made by ignorant
stenographers and not corrected by the business men who sign the letters.

But a change is coming over us.  We have suddenly taken to reading
books, and while they are not always the best books, they are better
than newspapers.  And now a young business man feels that it is
distinctly to his advantage if he can dictate a thoroughly good
letter to his superior or to a well informed customer.  Good letters
raise the tone of a business house, poor letters give the idea
that it is a cheapjack concern.  In social life, well written letters,
like good conversational powers, bring friends and introduce the
writer into higher circles.  A command of language is the index of
culture, and the uneducated man or woman who has become wealthy
or has gained any special success is eager to put on this wedding
garment of refinement.  If he continues to regard a good command
of language as a wedding garment, he will probably fail in his effort;
but a few will discover the way to self-education and actively follow
it to its conclusion adding to their first success this new achievement.

But we may even go farther.  The right kind of language-teaching will
also give us power, a kind of eloquence, a skill in the use of words, which
will enable us to frame advertisements which will draw business, letters
which will win customers, and to speak in that elegant and forceful way so
effective in selling goods.  When all advertisements are couched in very
imperfect language, and all business letters are carelessly written, of
course no one has an advantage over another, and a good knowledge and
command of language would not be much of a recommendation to a business
man who wants a good assistant.  But when a few have come in and by their
superior command of language gained a distinct advantage over rivals, then
the power inherent in language comes into universal demand——the business
standard is raised.  There are many signs now that the business standard
in the use of language is being distinctly raised.  Already a stenographer
who does not make errors commands a salary from 25 per cent. to 50 per
cent. higher than the average, and is always in demand.  Advertisement
writers must have not only business instinct but language instinct,
and knowledge of correct, as well as forceful, expression{.}

Granted, then, that we are all eager to better our knowledge of the
English language, how shall we go about it?

There are literally thousands of published books devoted to the study
and teaching of our language.  In such a flood it would seem that we
should have no difficulty in obtaining good guides for our study.

But what do we find?  We find spelling-books filled with lists of words to
be memorized; we find grammars filled with names and definitions of all
the different forms which the language assumes; we find rhetorics filled
with the names of every device ever employed to give effectiveness to
language; we find books on literature filled with the names, dates of birth
and death, and lists of works, of every writer any one ever heard of:
and when we have learned all these names we are no better off than when
we started.  It is true that in many of these books we may find prefaces
which say, “All other books err in clinging too closely to mere system,
to names; but we will break away and give you the real thing.”  But they
don't do it; they can't afford to be too radical, and so they merely modify
in a few details the same old system, the system of names.  Yet it is a
great point gained when the necessity for a change is realized.

How, then, shall we go about our mastery of the English language?

Modern science has provided us a universal method by which we may study
and master any subject.  As applied to an art, this method has proved
highly successful in the case of music.  It has not been applied to
language because there was a well fixed method of language study
in existence long before modern science was even dreamed of, and that
ancient method has held on with wonderful tenacity.  The great fault with
it is that it was invented to apply to languages entirely different from
our own.  Latin grammar and Greek grammar were mechanical systems of
endings by which the relationships of words were indicated.  Of course the
relationship of words was at bottom logical, but the mechanical form was
the chief thing to be learned.  Our language depends wholly (or very nearly
so) on arrangement of words, and the key is the logical relationship.
A man who knows all the forms of the Latin or Greek language can write
it with substantial accuracy; but the man who would master the English
language must go deeper, he must master the logic of sentence structure
or word relations.  We must begin our study at just the opposite end from
the Latin or Greek; but our teachers of language have balked at a complete
reversal of method, the power of custom and time has been too strong, and
in the matter of grammar we are still the slaves of the ancient world.
As for spelling, the irregularities of our language seem to have driven us
to one sole method, memorizing: and to memorize every word in a language
is an appalling task.  Our rhetoric we have inherited from the middle ages,
from scholiasts, refiners, and theological logicians, a race of men who got
their living by inventing distinctions and splitting hairs.  The fact is,
prose has had a very low place in the literature of the world until
within a century; all that was worth saying was said in poetry, which
the rhetoricians were forced to leave severely alone, or in oratory,
from which all their rules were derived; and since written prose language
became a universal possession through the printing press and the
newspaper we have been too busy to invent a new rhetoric.

Now, language is just as much a natural growth as trees or rocks or
human bodies, and it can have no more irregularities, even in the matter
of spelling, than these have.  Science would laugh at the notion of
memorizing every individual form of rock.  It seeks the fundamental laws,
it classifies and groups, and even if the number of classes or groups
is large, still they have a limit and can be mastered.  Here we have a
solution of the spelling problem.  In grammar we find seven fundamental
logical relationships, and when we have mastered these and their chief
modifications and combinations, we have the essence of grammar as truly
as if we knew the name for every possible combination which our seven
fundamental relationships might have.  Since rhetoric is the art of
appealing to the emotions and intelligence of our hearers, we need to
know, not the names of all the different artifices which may be employed,
but the nature and laws of emotion and intelligence as they may be
reached through language; for if we know what we are hitting at, a little
practice will enable us to hit accurately; whereas if we knew the name of
every kind of blow, and yet were ignorant of the thing we were hitting at,
namely the intelligence and emotion of our fellow man, we would be forever
striking into the air,―striking cleverly perhaps, but ineffectively.

Having got our bearings, we find before us a purely practical problem,
that of leading the student through the maze of a new science and teaching
him the skill of an old art, exemplified in a long line of masters.

By way of preface we may say that the mastery of the English language
(or any language) is almost the task of a lifetime.  A few easy lessons
will have no effect.  We must form a habit of language study that will
grow upon us as we grow older, and little by little, but never by leaps,
shall we mount up to the full expression of all that is in us.

Also see:

• [v . 1] Word-Study 

  [v . 2] Grammar & Punctuation  

  [v . 3] Composition & Rhetoric 

  [v . 4] Constructive Rhetoric 

  [v . 5] Story Writing & Journalism 

  [v . 6] How To Read And What To Read