I have no idea how anyone can get as much attention as S&W, but I'm pretty sure we can't. Maybe the question should be, what's the boundary between description and prescription?

As grammarians, we're descriptivists. We know enough to know we don't determine the language, it determines itself--or, more accurately, the aggregate of its speakers determine it through how they speak and write it. It evolves, changing constantly. Our job is to examine the language and tell the world (or maybe just other grammarians) what we find.

As for prescription, there's a bad kind and a good kind. The bad kind of prescriptivism is practiced by people who think a coterie of authorities determine the English language. Of course they consider themselves among that number and blithely dictate, unfazed by self-consciousness. These are the people who gave us such chestnuts as "Never end a sentence with a preposition" and "Never split an infinitive." It bothers them not at all that these rules reflect the usage of neither average speakers nor eminent writers.

But there is good prescription too. Writing teachers practice it all the time. Guided by our study of the language, we are familiar with standard practice, and we guide our students accordingly. We don't hesitate to correct errors or to give helpful stylistic advice.

Strunk & White did some bad prescriptivism, but they did some of the good kind too. For example, they unduly stigmatized the passive voice, which can be the best choice in many rhetorical situations. On the good side, they had a strong positive influence in advocating a clear, direct, uncluttered style.

Dick


On Sun, Sep 11, 2011 at 10:15 AM, Geoffrey Layton <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
As much as we all like to beat up on Strunk and White, they are alive and well and featured guests in a recent Career Builders essay on resume writing that got extra distribution as a link on today's msn.com main news page (see below).
 
http://msn.careerbuilder.com/Article/MSN-2721-Cover-Letters-Resumes-The-elements-of-résumé-style/?SiteId=cbmsnhp42721&sc_extcmp=JS_2721_home1?gt1=23000

The point is this - instead of continuing to rail against them, should we not be using what makes them so popular?  I'd suggest that at least part of the reason for their long lived success is the very prescriptivism that has been so thoroughly debunked in the academy. In other words, people (and perhaps our students are part of this ubiquitous "people" group) like to know that there is a right and wrong about grammar. And my guess is that a very large percent of students entering any composition class will list "improve my grammar" at or near the top of their list.
 
So is there any way that we academic grammarians can become the new Strunk and White (NOTE TO CAREER BUILDERS - THEY'RE DEAD!).

Geoff Layton
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