As the story goes, Winston Churchill had the ultimate comeback to someone who told him he should not end a sentence with a preposition: “That is a rule up with which I will not put.”
I’ll add one more to the list.
Forget about using nominative pronouns after the verb “to be” or equivalent verbs like “to become.”
I had a professor who said, “‘It is I’ is actually correct English, but unless you want to be deemed a pompous ass, you shouldn’t say it unless it is immediately followed by “Don Quixote, Lord of La Mancha.”
I considered what he said and realized he was right. Has anyone ever answered the telephone query “Who is this?” with “It’s I” or “It is I”? If you heard that, you’d assume you were talking to a weirdo.
This is a case where I don’t always follow my own advice. I had those rules drilled into my brain so incessantly that, without thinking, I still type things like “Yes, that was she.” The app called Grammarly annoyingly corrects my correct English and tells me to use “her,” as I suppose it should, to reflect modern usage.
Of course, that app also just tried to correct its own name in the paragraph above, so perhaps it still needs some refinement.
I am of the firm belief that all language is simply a means of communication between people and there can never be a right or wrong. It is a constantly changing system where people are modifying it for increased efficiency and effectiveness. Any person claiming there is some ownership to it and telling us what is and isn’t proper is completely out of bounds. They have no right to that, it isn’t some invention they patented. Quite simply, they are full of shit. Whether a person is or isn’t good at communication will be determined by those around them and they will be treated accordingly.
I had a paid Grammarly account for a year, but didn’t renew it because I found its near-constant rephrasing advice to be more annoying than useful. I was fine with paying for the service, but, unfortunately, for them, their free account’s help with spelling and punctuation is all I need or desire.*
*This comment was written with the assistance of a free Grammarly account.
Well, nowadays “Yes, that was a she” is also common for some reason.
Kirstie Alley got that Churchill line once on cheers, when declared that ‘there are some things up with which I will not put!’
All languages evolve. If it’s your native language, you should get to help evolve it.
For example, when people force hospitality on you, I like to call it hospitility, being a combination of hospitality and hostility. It’s my language and I’ll fuck with it at will.
Deal with it Harvard and Websters.
PR
I’m a copy editor by trade, which means I am someone more conscious of and bound by the rules of language than the average Joe. And those “rules” in the article are not rules any copy editor or serious grammar book heeds today. They are more like shibboleths promoted by your grandmother’s middle school English teacher that, zombie-like, refuse to die.
Nothing more dangerous than a dangling participle on the prowl.