Ben,

Thanks for posting the list of rules.  I'm going to circulate it to a
class of 9 advanced grad students in linguistics this afternoon and see
what response it gets.  They, if anyone, should be critical of such
rules.  

It would be interesting to ask teachers why they think these rules are,
if not valid, at least appropriate to teach.  12, for example, addresses
a register difference in 

Where is it?

vs. 

Where is it at?

However, in speech, since we'd contract to "where's" and "it" is topical
and so can't be stressed, there has to be a word to carry the tonic
accent, and so "at" goes in.  In this case the accentual system trumps
the adverbial classification of "where".  In 8, there are plenty of
examples, in good writing, going back three or four centuries, of
"everybody," "somebody," "anybody" used as plurals.  

I usually restate 15 for my students as "All grammar checkers are
incompetent."

By the way, the most effective way I've found of explaining the use of
the semi-colon is semi-graphically.  When I'm sure my grammar students
are reasonably competent with commas and periods, and I don't spend much
time on this, I give them some examples of appropriate uses of
semi-colons and explain that a semi-colon can be thought of as a period
lowered by a comma or as a comma raised by a period.  That seems to make
sense to them.

My own treatment of period/comma and quotations marks has been
influenced by work I used to do in computer programming and work I still
do in linguistics, where quotation marks are used to identify literal
strings of characters, so there's a difference between "house", and
"house,", the latter containing one additional character.  I'm afraid
that usage has spread pretty much across my writing.

Herb


The following are fifteen so-called grammar and punctuation
"rules" which are not rules at all.  When I sent this list to
the elementary school teachers whom I teach about grammar and
punctuation, they were astounded:

     1. Never use "Because,""And," or "But" to start a sentence.
     2. Fragments are always considered an error in writing.
     3. Where you pause, put a comma.
     4. Where you breathe, put a comma.
     5. Never put a comma before "and" in a series.
     6. The semicolon is an outdated mark of punctuation.
     7. The most important part of speech is the noun.
     8. The pronouns "everybody," "somebody," "anybody" are plural.
     9. The pronoun "who" is always first, and the pronoun "whom" is
        always last.
    10. Dashes and hyphens are interchangeable marks of punctuation.
    11. Periods and commas can go inside or outside of quotation marks.
    12. Never end a sentence with a preposition.
    13. Never split an infinitive.
    14. Passive voice means you are too casual in your sentences.
    15. Grammar checkers on computers are usually correct.

If you have any others to add, let me know.

        Ben Varner

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