Apostrophizing Friday

Hoping to feel more blog-inspiration tomorrow, I leave you with two instructive links on the proper use of apostrophes.

1. Apostrophe.me (thanks to LifeHacker.com) is clear, casual, and amusing.

2. For those who need a more forceful approach, Bob the Angry Flower explains (via a LifeHacker.com comment).

Seriously, the only punctuation goof that seems more egregious than apostrophe errors is the placing of quotation marks after parenthetical references instead at the close of the actual quote. Don’t get me started.

Grammar is not trivial

The medieval trivium consisted of grammar, logic, and rhetoric—the foundation of all higher learning, including the quadrivium: geometry, astronomy, arithmetic, and music. Now “trivial” means inconsequential, frivolous, scarcely necessary. But clearly its etymology is—beyond the basic “three”—the idea of something that is, well, basic. And it’s easy to ignore the basics, until you don’t have them. Milk, for example. I never think about it, until I pour a cup of coffee or a bowl of cereal and discover there’s NOTHING to put in it. Inevitably this disaster occurs early in the morning, too.

So heed the wisdom of my former student Abigail, pondering grammar to the glory of God.

As Christians in this time, we are compelled to set ourselves apart as fellow sufferers for the gospel–and if the gospel permeates us, it envelopes everything in our lives and causes us to yearn to glorify God in all things. Thus, we must hold on to the knowledge that we know to be true, and realize that through it we might glorify the Lord as we “set the believers an example in SPEECH, in conduct, in love, in faith, in purity” (1 Timothy 4:12).

Nothing in our lives and work is too “trivial” to be offered to God, as Brother Lawrence learned:

“Nor is it needful that we should have great things to do. . . We can do little things for God; I turn the cake that is frying on the pan for love of him, and that done, if there is nothing else to call me, I prostrate myself in worship before him, who has given me grace to work; afterwards I rise happier than a king. It is enough for me to pick up but a straw from the ground for the love of God.”

“Pick up a straw,” or correct a comma-splice—the motivation is what makes it worthwhile—for the love and greater glory of God.

Language and thinking

Research seems to be demonstrating that “people who speak different languages do indeed think differently and that even flukes of grammar can profoundly affect how we see the world.”

Intriguing article! I’ve often said, as this writer does, that language is an essential element of our humanity, and I tell students yearly that  gaining mastery over one’s own language (and at least one other) is vital for thinking and living effectively in the larger human community. Boroditsky’s research and other experiments are showing, for example:

How do we know that it is language itself that creates these differences in thought and not some other aspect of their respective cultures?

One way to answer this question is to teach people new ways of talking and see if that changes the way they think. In our lab, we’ve taught English speakers different ways of talking about time. In one such study, English speakers were taught to use size metaphors (as in Greek) to describe duration (e.g., a movie is larger than a sneeze), or vertical metaphors (as in Mandarin) to describe event order. Once the English speakers had learned to talk about time in these new ways, their cognitive performance began to resemble that of Greek or Mandarin speakers. This suggests that patterns in a language can indeed play a causal role in constructing how we think.6 In practical terms, it means that when you’re learning a new language, you’re not simply learning a new way of talking, you are also inadvertently learning a new way of thinking.

… Language is central to our experience of being human, and the languages we speak profoundly shape the way we think, the way we see the world, the way we live our lives.
(6 Ibid., “How Deep Are Effects of Language on Thought? Time Estimation in Speakers of English and Greek” (in review); L. Boroditsky, “Does Language Shape Thought? English and Mandarin Speakers’ Conceptions of Time.” Cognitive Psychology 43, no. 1(2001): 1–22.)

And these ideas about the pervasive effects of language and perspective also apply to reading poetry and any literature. If one can possibly encounter a literary text in its original language, that is best. An English translation of a Japanese haiku is not actually equivalent. Seamus Heaney’s translation of Beowulf is not really Beowulf, though it’s a rattling good read. Buffy in French isn’t quite Buffy.

Spelling—not that hard

Not for me, at least (she boasted vainly), I think because I seem to have a pretty good visual memory, but even so I usually find that I have to come back and fix one or two careless spelling errors in these postings, just because I’m not always paying attention. However, everyone agrees that English spelling is gruesome, because the language is a glorious jumble of different base languages that was “frozen” in print before reasonable (i.e., phonetic) spelling rules could be imposed. British/Canadian and American spellings differ as well. Nevertheless, English spelling can be conquered without resorting to replacing to/two/too with “2″ with some care and attention to rules, exceptions and mnemonics.

These guidelines note that if you really want to improve your spelling, you’re going to have to practice, practice, practice. And note rule #9, which is more about punctuation:

Watch out for the “grocer’s apostrophe.” This gets its name from a spelling error traditionally made by greengrocers on signs in produce sections. Unfortunately, this error is popping up in all sorts of places these days. Remember that an apostrophe with an “s” shows possession. Correct: “The banana’s skin turned brown.” You do not use an apostrophe to form the regular plural of a noun. Not correct: “Special on banana’s: 49 cents.”

Semester underway–one good post deserves reposting

Or something like that. What I mean is that as I’m updating links for my composition classes, I re-discovered last year’s CNN story about Grammar Girl podcasts.

Her recent commentaries include a number of issues I see students stumble over weekly, such as “who vs. that,” “effect vs. affect” and even the dreaded “generic singular pronouns”–where she and I do not quite see eye to eye. But she still has some advice worth considering.

Looking forward to a Spring of improved writing.

In which I apparently have too much time on my hands

…because I found myself reading this article about the internet blog/linguistic phenomenon known as “lolcats.”

Some other academic types, who have even more time on their hands, have come up with the often obscure and frequently disrespectful loltheorists. Be afraid. Be very afraid. Though this one is rather good.

Back to real work now.

Advanced Placemats

I’ve made it through day six of the AP-Literature scoring marathon. The availability of free internet access was highly exaggerated, and my laptop was baffling as well, but I have managed to check e-mail a couple of times, and I thought I’d better post so at least the one person who checks this site regularly will know I’m OK.

When I get home, I hope to post more about this process, and the astounding number of ways one can spell “onomatopoeia.” And it has now been definitively determined that there are at least a few wrong ways to interpret a poem.

I’ve also met several pleasant people among the hundreds of (presumably) nice people here. More about them, too.

What shall I do on my summer vacation?

Some people are going to study abroad (I know of a couple of students whose passports arrived just in time to get them to Costa Rica). Some have summer jobs. Some are lucky enough to actually recreate during summer. And then there’s summer school. As an English professor, two things I’ve come to dislike are (1) people saying “Oh, an English teacher! I’ll have to watch my grammar!”—because really, how rude would I have to be to correct their grammar in a social setting? and (2) people saying “Oh, a teacher! You get all summer free!” Anyone who says this just hasn’t thought about it much—but why would they? Of course, it could be worse. I could be a medical doctor instead of a Ph.D. and have people immediately start telling me about their mysterious ailments.

So what do I do all summer? It depends. This summer I’ll spend a week scoring AP-Literature essays, which will be a new experience for me. I’ll be revising my Arthurian Legends course to teach it as a summer M.Ed. class—again, something new. Also, during summer I usually revise course syllabi and/or prepare any new courses. This summer, the English dept. faculty will be working on some other projects as well. I’ll probably research papers I plan to present at conferences. And I believe there may be a weekend at the beach somewhere between June 1 and August 16.

Earlier in May, a Clemson professor gave her take on the subject of college professors and summer “vacation” in the Chronicle of Higher Education.