Excerpt from Says Who? by Anne Curzan, plus links to reviews, author biography & more

Introduction

The wedding was at a swanky hotel in Boston, and I was early. I picked up my table card and was milling about before the ceremony in a little black dress and higher heels than I can mill about in comfortably. Unable to find anyone I knew nearby, I introduced myself to a friendly-looking couple about my age with a ten-year-old boy who was not-so-subtly trying to loosen his necktie. After exchanging pleasantries, the mother and I turned to questions about what we each did professionally. She worked as an editor, and when she learned that I study the history of the English language and that I was writing a usage guide, her face lit up. "Oh, you're my new best friend!" she exclaimed. "I have so many questions for you. We could talk for hours!"

It's a well-kept secret that being a grammar geek can occasionally be good for your social life. My new best friend went on, "Okay, let's start with impact as a verb. I can't stand that! What do you think?"

I paused, knowing that the conversation was about to get dicey. "Listen," I replied, "I get it. My pet peeve is the adjective impactful—it sounds like nails on a chalkboard to me. But, honestly, I think we're both going to have to stand down. Impact is a verb and there's nothing grammatically wrong with impactful. And, clearly, lots of other people think these words are useful."

I tell this story to highlight that almost all of us notice things in the English language that we wish, well, weren't in the English language. There are some peeves that are widely shared, such as impact as a verb to mean 'affect,' and there are others that seem to be idiosyncratic: For example, I regularly get emails from an astute language observer who is concerned about the spread of the preposition toward into expressions such as dismissive toward and express gratitude toward. I hadn't noticed this linguistic phenomenon until he pointed it out—and, for what it's worth, I have no strong feelings about it.

As far as I can tell, it is human nature to notice language, both consciously and unconsciously. We make a mental note of some of the new words and new bits of grammar that we hear and see around us, exactly because they are novel. And when we travel to new regions and/or meet new people, we can't help but observe some of the differences we hear in the language. Some of us may notice when speakers don't follow a so-called rule that we learned from a trusted language authority. I'm all for this kind of noticing: It shows our fundamental curiosity about how language works—how it varies from speaker to speaker and how it changes over time.

A key question for all of us then to consider is what we do with our observations. Do we feel compelled to judge that new word or usage as illegitimate? Or do we congratulate ourselves on spotting a new word or bit of grammar? Should we jump in and correct someone when we think they made a grammatical mistake? Or should we stand back and admire how language changes and evolves right before our eyes?

If you care about words—like I do and, as someone who picked up this book, you do—you probably have an inner grammando. The new word grammando was introduced in March 2012 in Lizzie Skurnick's feature "That Should Be a Word" in The New York Times Magazine. Here's her definition:

Grammando: (Gruh-MAN-doh), n., adj. 1. One who constantly corrects others' linguistic mistakes. "Cowed by his grammando wife, Arthur finally ceased saying 'irregardless.'"

Clever and evocative, the word grammando strikes me as an excellent alternative to both grammar stickler and grammar Nazi. If we're going to talk about Nazis, let's talk about Nazis. If we're going to talk about people who correct other people's grammar, let's talk about grammandos (even though the word is not yet accepted by the spellchecker that is checking my spelling as I write this).

Excerpted from Says Who? by Anne Curzan. Copyright © 2024 by Anne Curzan. Excerpted by permission of Crown. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.