I've got a new favorite, and its name is Language Log.
Not that long ago, it gave me a grammatical crisis of conscience over the 'that'/'which' distinction. I've always thought that 'that' should be used in restrictive sense and 'which' should be used in the nonrestrictive sense. So:
John has a blog that rocks BUT John's blog, which rocks, is a constant source of fascinating links and information.
Clearly, as a descriptive rule, this fails. I learned it from Strunk & White, but it's prevalent in the style guides of many magazines, including, I think, The New Yorker and Harper's (to name two). I've personally been responsible for its placement in The Grape's and Wilder Voice's style guide--not to mention a number of student papers.
But the fact of the matter is, most people don't follow this rule. The best example? Arnold Zwicky glosses:
"This is a day, which will live in infamy"
Yikes!
I'll Zwicky take us out:
# First thought: There is a sense (alluded to by James Smith in an ADS-L posting of 13 May) in which text that obeys the That Rule is clearer than text that does not, though text of the latter sort is not actually UNclear.
# But on second thought, this extra bit of clarity is achieved by a prescription that has at least three odd characteristics: it seeks to eliminate an option long available in the formal standard written language; in doing so, it insists on increasing the redundancy of this variety (though prescriptions are usually profoundly conservative in this regard, insisting that redundancy in the standard language is exactly right in amount and in exactly the right places); and it opts -- surprisingly -- in favor of the variant (that) which is widely perceived as being the more INformal alternative.
# Third thought: The That Rule has disseminated very unevenly. The primary agents of its spread seem to those responsible for overseeing the editing of copy for newspapers and book publishing, especially in the United States. American journalists figure prominently in the story. Meanwhile, many people not involved in the editing enterprise (including scholars of grammar and usage) seem to have missed the "rule" entirely or to have tuned it out as irrelevant to their concerns. One result is a startling disparity between, on the one hand, the advice books and style sheets that presses put out and, on the other hand, the grammars of English (some intended for students) that these same presses publish.
# Fourth thought: In the process of dissemination, the That Rule has made its way into textbooks and manuals for writers. Once there, the prescription might well go on forever as a "zombie rule"; no matter how many times, and how thoroughly, it is executed by authorities (like Quirk, Biber, Huddleston & Pullum, or, for that matter, me), it continues its wretched life-in-death in style sheets and grammar checkers and the like.
What's a poor copy editor to do? Do we change the style guide and give into the anti-prescriptivist forces, or do we stay strong and keep a (potentially) unnecessary rule?
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