Who Makes British Grammar Rules

Who decides who makes all of the English grammar rules so when to change them? I scoured the web for any whiff of the National Grammar Rules Agency or perhaps a Government Department of Sentence structure, or a National Vocabulary Regulatory Commission, or Government Grammar Board.

Not 1 hit!

So who chooses? Does someone send away a survey every 10 years? Do they ask queries like, “How many members of the household are grammatically proper? ” or “What words not use any more? ” or “How many times previously year have you utilized adoxography or quidnunc? inch (Yes, they’re actual, look them up).

When they sent out a study I didn’t get 1.

I wish I understood who “they” were. We now have the dictionary people. Then there’s the linguistics folks whose job it’s to dabble in language stuff all day long. Is they them? Then there’s the Language Arts gurus within our universities. Or maybe it’s individuals lexicographers or those soft-spoken etymologists who play with this words and slip them in and from our dictionaries and term warehouses. Are they “they”? Or what about the textbook people? They need to keep writing new editions of the books to sell school boards about the notion that the current version is preferable to the one the school boards bought in the past. Why? Because the guidelines keep changing?

No. The guidelines don’t change. My preferred grammar book is 1 my grandfather used known as “Grammar, Rhetoric and Composition” through Richard D. Mallery, The brand new Home Library, copyright 1944 through Garden City Publishing Company. Did you catch which copyright date? The book says adjectives continue to be descriptive, limiting or correct. It calls comparison associated with adjectives positive, comparative or even superlative. The definition of the complex sentence is (and is at his day) a sentence comprising one independent clause and a minumum of one dependent clause. Comma splices occurred then the same as today. Writers in my grandfather’s day time even dangled a few participles every so often. The book cautions students to not end a sentence having a preposition or start a sentence using the conjunctions And or However.

But now (I understand. I broke the rule–not only having a sentence but a entire paragraph. So, report me personally. Who will you statement me to? If We follow you, maybe I’ll discover who they are. )#) some language maven bloggers plus some other wordsmiths are telling us that they’re casting out some from the good ol’ boys. Rules they say are no more regarded as useful or even necessary.

They have identified 7 rules they say we do not have to follow anymore. The English language includes a bazillion rules. How did they develop these seven? And why seven and never ten or 17 or even 27? Who do they think they’re? I don’t know who they’re. But I know exactly what they are-arbitrary and capricious. That’s what they’re.

Here are the 7 rules they picked to march towards the gallows:

1. Never divided an infinitive. Who may wish to ever do that anyhow?

2. Active voice verbs are better than passive voice verbs. I’ll never part with that one. This rule has been encrypted during my memory’s hard drive. Unaggressive voice will forever end up being stricken from my composing.

3. Never start the sentence with And or even But. Okay. I can spend that one.

4. Never begin a sentence with “There is” or even “There are. ” I’m sorry, whoever they is, That one sticks like glue. There is nothing more confusing to some reader than having in order to scour through a sentence trying to puzzle out what the writer is saying when she or he begins his or the woman’s sentence with “There is” or even “There are. ”

Can there be? Of course not. That one stays.

5. Never end a sentence having a preposition. Now that’s a rule they are able to do without.

6. Always use “more than” rather than “over” with numbers. Alright. Whatever. Math’s not my personal gig.

7. Data is actually plural, so the verb should always be plural. So information is what data will? Or data are exactly what data do? If these people say so.

So I suppose they are telling all of us it’s okay now in order to sometimes split infinitives and begin sentences with And or even But, and end the sentences with prepositions. I wonder when they have real jobs. Or did they just wake up one day and navigate to the office and agree to throw a lot of grammar rules out the actual window?