Bill, Scott,
   If the corpus grammars tell it accurately, writing with nouns and 
verbs is good advice for fiction (Biber found a negative correlation for 
attributive adjectives), but not for journalism or academic writing, 
which build lots of meaning into the noun phrases. Of  course, saying 
adjectives should be used sparingly is not the same as saying they are 
unimportant. The lone adjective may be the most important word in the 
sentence. But English teachers especially seem to equate literacy with 
literature.
   I thought Pullum was a bit arrogant in the review, a bit 
disrespectful of the writing teacher's perspective. And it may very well 
be that linguists are much to blame for not giving us a discourse 
friendly grammar to work with. There's some good advice in the little 
book, but enough problems to negate that out. I usually tell students 
who own the book not to pay attention to anything but the style sections.

Craig
Spruiell, William C wrote:
> Scott:
>
> I've had similar students --- but the advice they need is more along the
> lines of, "use specific nouns, not fluffy ones." The problem really
> isn't the adjectives and adverbs. And at least some of those students
> aren't deliberately being verbose, or displaying signs of functional
> illiteracy (they probably know a fair number of highly specific
> nouns...but they're part of the students' passive vocabulary, rather
> than being part of the active pool that is deployed when writing).
> Instead, they've adopted a common strategy of marking out a general area
> with the noun and then using modifiers to home in on a particular spot
> in within it. 
>
> In fact, it's the same thing professional writers do when they come out
> with sentences such as "The fact that these results have been observed
> indicates that the phenomenon is real." "Fact" is fluffy -- but since I
> know the genre, I know when I can get away with using it (if that
> sentence bothers you, all I can say is that amazing numbers of articles
> have been published with near-equivalents). Students pick up on that
> kind of practice, but they don't yet have enough exposure to scientific
> genre to know which words can be used in particular cases without coming
> across as "gauche."
>
> This simply highlights one of Pullum's points: One of S&W's major
> injunctions is that writers should be clear and concise, but they wrote
> THEIR OWN RULE in a way that attacked a side effect of the actual
> problem rather than the problem itself, and implied there was something
> wrong with entire classes of words that are only problematic when
> they're used as part of a compensation mechanism. It's as if I watched
> someone using glue to connect two pieces of wood that should instead
> have been nailed together, and then proclaimed that glue is a bad thing.
> I'd probably figure out my mistake once I saw people trying to nail
> wallpaper.
>
> Bill Spruiell
>
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Assembly for the Teaching of English Grammar
> [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Scott
> Sent: Thursday, April 16, 2009 1:08 PM
> To: [log in to unmask]
> Subject: Re: An expert speaks? was ATEG Digest - 14 Apr 2009 to 15 Apr
> 2009 (#2009-86)
>
> Pulliam is the stupid one if he does not understand what The Little Book
> means by 
> "Write with nouns and verbs, not with adjectives and adverbs," they
> insist.
> (The motivation of this mysterious decree remains unclear to me.)
>
> Anyone who had ever graded English themes, especially descriptive
> writing,
> has been exposed to students who use plain verbs and generic nouns, both
> of
> which are accompanied by a plethora of adverbs and adjectives
> respectively
> when more descriptive verbs and nouns would do a far better job with
> less
> effort.  The only explanation that I can give for such students is
> either
> functional illiteracy or sheer laziness (many theme assignments have--or
> used to have--a minimum number of words).  The slovenly among them use
> any
> gimmick to expand their impoverished thoughts and expression.
>
> I cannot believe that Professor Pulliam has taught English without
> having
> encountered such students: his extreme prejudice towards The Little Book
> seems to have blinded him to the extent that he can only see vices and
> never
> virtue.  The Little Book has its faults; however, I would trust Shrunk
> and
> White over a "grammarian" who has had too little contact with writing to
> understand the motivation for the very sound advice:
>
> "Write with nouns and verbs, not with adjectives and adverbs." 
> (The motivation of this decree is quite clear to me and has been since
> Freshman English.)
>
> Scott Catledge
> Professor Emeritus
>
> During the "God is dead" fad of the 60's, I had a bumper sticker that
> said,
> "My God is alive--sorry about yours."
>
> My understanding of the "motivation" is clear to me--sorry it's not
> clear
> to him.  Perhaps he should teach a Freshman English course sometime.
>
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