Date that quote
An exercise for the reader: date this quotation, on the basis of its
content or form or both:
The present tendency in the teaching of
English composition is all for power, for originality, for evidence of
intellectual promise and capacity, for striking and vivid expression,
-- in a word, for personality.
... There is a gap in the transition from school to college, and the
reminders of grammar and good form are too often dismissed in the
effort to obtain vigor and freshness of thought.
The general sentiment is a familiar one: critics complain that the
teaching of writing has gone to hell in a handbasket because teachers
emphasize creativity and the development of an individual "voice",
meanwhile slighting grammar and mechanics. These days, such
unfortunate trends are usually attributed to permissiveness (dating
back to the '60s), the abandonment of traditional grammar (linguists
are often identified as the villains here), and a decline in respect
for authority.
But in the quotation above, the blame is laid specifically on college
teachers. The passage assumes that grammar and good form are
taught in the schools, but abandoned in college. Nobody would
assume that today, when the critiques are of teaching at all levels.
So we're probably looking at a passage from some time ago, a conclusion
supported by aspects of its form ("is all for", "too often dismissed",
"obtain").
And so it is: it's from the preface to
Manual of Good English by H. N.
McCracken and Helen E. Sandison (then the president of Vassar College
and an instructor in English there, respectively), published by
Macmillan in 1917. The book was apparently a best-seller in the '20s.
Some things remain the same, some change. The "Words" section
covers
different from/than,
fewer/less,
oral/verbal,
individual for
person,
unique 'rare, odd', "overworked"
very, and many other familiar
points of usage. On the other hand, McCracken and Sandison label
as "colloquial" -- sometimes acceptably so, sometimes not -- many
usages that wouldn't raise an editorial eyebrow these days, for
instance the noun
raise (in
salary) for
increase and the
verb
run (a business) for
conduct or
manage. And of course they
don't discuss points that have become usage shibboleths since their
day: notably, speaker-oriented
hopefully
and restrictive relativizer
which
vs.
that. (M&S
don't use
hopefully, which
didn't become common for decades after their manual, but they do use
plenty of restrictive
which,
beginning on p. xix, which has three occurrences.)
zwicky at-sign csli period stanford period edu
Posted by Arnold Zwicky at July 3, 2007 12:03 PM