I enjoyed Pullman's article very much and thought it was on the money. White himself admitted that he did not know much about his subject matter. In 1957, he wrote, "I felt uneasy at posing as an expert on rhetoric, when the truth is I write by ear, always with difficulty and seldom with any exact notion of what is taking place under the hood."
On another matter, would readers please tell me whether they would consider the following sentence passive:
The information gathered from a book was unquestioned.
The sentence comes from Richard Rodriguez. He is talking about his early reading experiences in elementary school.
Thanks,
Ed S
On May 6, 2010, at 9:15 PM, STAHLKE, HERBERT F wrote:
About a year ago Geoffrey Pullum, one of the authors and editors of the Cambridge Grammar of the English Language, published a trenchant critique of Strunk and White’s Elements of Style. I believe there was brief discussion of the critique at the time, and the topic continues to come up on Language Log and other linguistic blog sites. Pullum’s critique is available at http://chronicle.com/article/50-Years-of-Stupid-Grammar-/25497/ and is worth a read—or a reread—as a critique of popular knowledge of grammar and even of grammatical knowledge among those of us apparently specialized in the area. I’d be interested in what ATEG readers think of what Pullum has to say.
Herb
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