I have a BA in Liberal Arts and Sciences from the University of Illinois at Chicago. My major was English. I mention this because I generally don’t wear my LAS degree like a badge, and I’ve grown increasingly impatient with those who do.

Having gone to a Catholic grade school, the importance of grammar was impressed upon me daily by steel-ruler wielding nuns. I learned the difference between “there,” “their,” and “they’re” and woe to anyone in the class who didn’t grasp it. And the most effective page in a textbook I’ve ever seen– even to this day– was one that simply read, in bold text:

IT’S ALWAYS MEANS IT IS.

When I was in college, one Professor Hardy took down the grade on one of my papers just a fraction because I used the word “critique” as a verb. At that time, Merriam-Webster categorized “critique” as a noun only. That became something else I carried with me.

Needless to say, having this stuff drilled into me day after day throughout my formative years had an effect on me. I’d always make sure that whatever communication I’d create would be well constructed and appropriately delivered. I carried this through high school and college, then into the professional world. When I started accessing Usenet and later the Web, I was proud of the way I could hone a phrase in a discussion forum. (“I’m not saying Justin Hayward’s contribution to progressive rock wasn’t significant; I just believe ‘he’s so adorable’ is no basis for the creation of a Usenet newsgroup.” -me, sometime in 1994). It was very easy to sound intelligent when everyone else in the forums were either SHOUTING or developing their L337 Speak.

Above all, I tried not to turn into a pedantic smarty-pants.

As my daughters made their way through school, I tried to instill in them a sense of what correct grammar looked and sounded like, but I did it without the steel-ruler approach– I would offer gentle corrections. I’d occasionally find grammar mistakes in the newspaper and point them out to family and friends (like the time our local paper reported how the grade schools got electronic microscopes with special “censors” attached), but I tried really hard not to become that guy.

Then I started to notice more people around me calling out errors. Grammar blogs and podcasts started up, and people started carrying Wite-Out to remove errant apostrophes and Sharpies to put them in where they belonged. At first it was kind of funny and brought a sense of community to us English Majors, but then I realized I was surrounded by pedantic smarty-pantses.

And I was one of them.

This realization came to me via three different routes in a very short time. First, BBC film critic Mark Kermode has made a career out of being pedantic, but he presents his case in a sort of ironic form, which makes it a bit more palatable. Listen to a few of his reviews and you’ll hear statements (and associated lengthy explanations) like “that part of the movie was ‘obscene’ in the Greek sense of the word.” Mark can be a funny and interesting guy, but after a few months of listening I realized he is that guy.

Second, my lovely wife overheard my use of the phrase “I was an English major, and…” and she stopped, looked at me, and said “please don’t be that guy.” Wow– it was like some sort of laser-guided X-Acto knife aimed at my diploma (but in the nicest possible way).

Finally, I heard this podcast by actor Stephen Fry, in which he set things right regarding language and its usage. Fry is well-known to fans of British comedies like Blackadder and A Bit of Fry and Laurie, and is also a scholar of the English language. In this piece, Fry wonders why the people who concern themselves with language are focused on the mechanics rather than the joy of putting words together for the sheer fun of it. And in the process, he takes grammar cops down a notch or two:

Excerpt from Stephen Fry’s Podgrams, 22 December 2008: “Language”
(available at this link)

Sadly, desperately sadly, the only people who seem to be bothered with language today, bother with it in quite the wrong way. They write letters to broadcasters and newspapers in which they are rude and haughty about other peoples’ usage and in which they show off their superior knowledge of how language should be.

I hate that and I particularly hate that so many of these pedants assume that I’m on their side. When asked to join into a “let’s persuade this supermarket chain to get rid of their ‘five items or less’ sign”, I never join in. Yes, I am aware of the technical distinction between less and fewer, and between uninterested and disinterested and infer and imply, and all the rest of them but none of these are of importance to me. None of these are of importance, I said, you’ll notice. The old pedantic me would have insisted on none of them is of importance to me. Well I’m glad to say I’ve outgrown that silly approach to language.

Oscar Wilde, and there have been no more greater and more complete lords of language in the past thousand years, once included in a manuscript he was delivering to his publisher, a compliments slip in which he’d scribbled the injunction, ‘I’ll leave you to tidy up the woulds and shoulds, wills and shalls, thats and whichs etc’.

There’s all kinds of pedants around with more time to read and imitate Lynn Truss and John Humphries than to write poems, love letters, novels and stories it seems. They whip out their Sharpies and take away and add apostrophes from public signs. Shake their heads at prepositions which end sentences and mutter at split infinitives and misspellings.

But do they bubble and froth and slobber and careen with joy at language? Do they ever let the tripping of the tips of their tongues against the tops of their teeth transport them to giddy euphoric bliss? Do they ever yoke impossible words together for the sound-sex of it? Do they use language to seduce, charm, excite, please, affirm and tickle those they talk too? Do they? I doubt it, they’re too farting busy sneering at a green grocer’s less than perfect use of the apostrophe. Well sod them to Hades. They think they’re guardians of language; they’re no more guardians of language than the kennel club is the guardians of dog-kind.

Well put.

Don’t get me wrong: I’ll continue to honor my education by following the rules instilled in me, with my copy of The Transitive Vampire at my side, but I won’t be calling others out. I don’t want to be that guy. And nobody likes a smarty-pants.