🚀 go-pugleaf

I had intended to stay away from attempting to with malice
aforethought split either infinitives or skulls.  But our friend in
the blue linen labcoat wrote something so very sensible, that I
felt impelled to in as friendly a fashion as possible enter the
discussion.

a.  There is nothing wrong with grammar that couldn't be fixed by
removing the adjective "proper".

b.  Those of us who try to help our students write and speak more
effectively (practicing rhetoricians) experience our principal
difficulty dealing with SYNTAX.  English language is heavily dependent
upon syntax.  As we all know, most other European languages have
less reliance upon syntax.  I don't believe it is possible, for
one example, to split a French infinitive.  (I know that you can do
more serious splitting with German.)
If our students knew any of the terminology of grammar, we could more
readily talk with them about how to fix their wounded sentences.

c.  Writing depends upon linear processing of information.  Our students
have less capacity each year for this kind of cognitive processing.  They
are neither stupid nor empty-headed.  Global information processing will
simply not do in this electronic age.  If we are going to unlock any of
those doors that Lili suggested we pick open, we need to help our students
write a simple declarative sentence that can be understood by somebody
who doesn't already know the answer. (And then, of course, we need to
help them put four or five of these sentences together to form a somewhat
more complicated idea.  And then, maybe, a short essay. . . . )

d.  James Winans once observed that our training in schools tends to make
us incapable of informing others because students are constantly asked
to write, not to inform anybody, but to tell somebody WHO ALREADY KNOWS
THE ANSWER that the student knows it also.

e.  Beating up on grammarians is like setting up, and then demolishing,
straw men.  Even Browning didn't do that when he wrote "The Grammarian's
Funeral".  Using language as a way of keeping the unwashed out of the
nice places in life is reprehensible.  Bigots, of course, delight in
telling stories, with all the dialect orally underscored, of Rastus'
attempts to talk properly.  Such a depiction of one category of people
explains why we can no longer tolerate the "humor" of Amos and Andy.

But why do we condemn one practice when we engage in a similar one?
Let's quit making smart-ass comments about grammarians trying to keep
people from splitting infinitives.  Let's just share tactics we have
discovered for helping students write more clearly and attractively
for people whom they wish to inform and please.  Most of us have
actually succeeded in helping students write better.

Oh, let's also quit making smart-ass comments about how dumb our
students are.  They're ignorant (at least of what we wish they knew)
but they're no dumber than we.