What are the correct rules of English grammar?

Who says we cant split infinitives? Michael Rundell, Editor-in-Chief of the

Macmillan Dictionary, argues that we should epect linguistic rules to !e !ent
and !ro"en over time# $e will !e presenting on this topic at a %ritish Council
seminar, live-streamed from Cardiff on &uesday, ' (une#
Adult native speakers of a language rarely, if ever, make grammatical mistakes.
This might sound like an outlandish claim, but the counter-argument that bad
grammar is endemic rests on two common misunderstandings. The first arises
because of confusion about what the category grammar includes. The second
relates to different interpretations of the word rule, and what we mean when we
talk about the rules of a language. e will come to this in a moment.
The reason this is worth discussing is that people in the !nglish-speaking world
"and for all # know, in other cultures too$ are regularly lectured by self-appointed
e%perts telling them how bad their grammar is. Ancient notions, long ago
discredited, continue to show signs of life. A good e%ample is that old favourite
hopefully when it is used to mean it is to be hoped that & "'opefully, well get
there before its dark$. (y dog-eared copy of the )ongman *ictionary of
+ontemporary !nglish ")*,+!$ the first edition, published in -./0 includes
a usage note at the entry for this word. The note concedes that this use is becoming
very common, but warns that many teachers and writers regard it as incorrect. 1air
enough 2 this was almost 34 years ago, and other dictionaries of the time carried
similar health warnings. #n 54-3, though, this is the dominant use of hopefully. #ts
traditional use as a manner adverb "# thought you might ask me to stay, Tracey
said hopefully$ accounts for fewer than five per cent of all cases in contemporary
corpora. ,verwhelmingly, the modern meaning is the one people use. And for
good reason6 it performs, with efficiency and economy, a useful le%ical function
"rather like hoffentlich in 7erman$. #t ceased to be an issue long ago.
,r so we thought. 8et here is the !nglish 9ournalist :imon 'effer, discussing
hopefully in his 54-4 book :trictly !nglish6
This tiresome usage is now so ubi;uitous that those who ob9ect to it are sometimes
dismissed as pedants. #t remains wrong, and only a barbarous writer & would try to
pass it off as respectable prose.
A retired businessman named <eville 7wynne published a grammar guide in 54-=,
wheeling out all the usual suspects, including the in9unction against hopefully,
strictures on the correct use of would and should "it is wrong to say # would not
have succeeded without your help.$ and dire warnings against using the gender-
neutral their in a sentence such as # think someone has left their umbrella "he
describes the last as abominable, despite a history going back to the ->th century
and citations from a parade of well-respected writers, from Thackeray onwards$. #n
his reading list, 7wynne gives pride of place to two grammar books published in
-0.0 and -.406 7iven that both are more than a hundred years old, they can be
recommended as free from even the most insignificant errors. #t is hard to imagine
any other field of study in which a source is recommended precisely because it is
out of date.
#t would be easy to dismiss all this as harmless eccentricity but for the fact that both
authors attract legions of followers, and 7wynne regularly appears in the press and
on ??+ radio, where his ideas are listened to with rapt attention, and rarely
challenged. (eanwhile, in the @.:., :trunk and hites similarly prescriptive
!lements of :tyle "which dates back to -.-0$ continues to thrive, and its nostrums
underpin many an automated grammar checker. And in a biAarre ruling on split
infinitives, The !conomist :tyle 7uide gets itself into a proper mess, accepting that
the pre9udice against them has no sensible foundation, but still recommending that
writers avoid them, on the grounds that they may cause offence6 The ban is
pointless. @nfortunately, to see it broken is so annoying to so many people that you
should observe it.
:o what about the claim made in my opening sentenceB A good place to start is the
@Cs annual ?ad 7rammar Awards, which attract a good deal of media attention.
,f the si% nominations for the 54-3 edition, four featured errors in spelling and
punctuation, such as this notice in a primary school6 e all wash are hands after
playing in the sandpit. ?ut spelling and punctuation are not grammar. #n both
cases, the conventions are stable and were settled long ago. "#ndeed, one of
Dohnsons aims in writing his great dictionary of -/EE was to regularise !nglish
spelling, where, he said, there is still great uncertainty among the best criticks.$ #t
makes sense to conform to these well-established systemsF if you dont, you risk
causing confusion. The fifth nomination was for a sentence including the phrase
ongoing continuing professional development6 poorly written, to be sure, but the
problem is redundancy, not bad grammar. That leaves 9ust one nominee
"supermarket chain Tesco$ whose winning entry was the slogan :ame lu%ury, less
lorries. That really is about grammar, though the traditional rule "less for
uncountable nouns, fewer for countables$ has been losing ground for yearsF in the
?ritish +ouncils own pedagogical grammar, less is included without comment in a
list of ;uantifiers which are used with both count and uncount nouns.
To be clear6 grammar is not the same as spelling and punctuation. <or is it about
word meaning6 lists of common mistakes regularly include complaints about words
which have ac;uired new meanings that some people dislike. Thus 'effer insists
that decimate must mean the same in !nglish as decimare did in )atin. This is a
clear case of the etymological fallacy6 if we followed this logic, the only correct
meaning of hysterical "from )atin hystericus, and ultimately 7reek hystera, womb$
would be its original !nglish sense of suffering from discomfort in the womb.
Above all, grammar is not about the made-up rules which prescriptivists are so fond
of "and which 7wynnes book, for e%ample, is awash with$. The mistake lies in
confusing rules with norms or conventions. The use of should with first person
sub9ects and would with the rest "# should like & vs youGthey would like$ was
indeed a norm for many years. ?ut conventions change over time, and the evidence
of usage shows that this distinction is rarely observed now. <o-one could argue that
the clarity of a speakers message is affected by this change, so to say it is wrong
to break this rule is irrational. :imilarly, anyone asking Whom did you invite to
your partyB "in any but the most formal conte%t$ would invite ridicule now, even if
this was once ;uite normal. "The use of whom, e%cept in certain specific
constructions, is in long-term decline.$
The real rules of grammar describe the formal structure of a language. They are,
effectively, generalisations about how words fit together to create meanings, and
they are identified through the study of linguistic evidence 2 the things that people
write and say when they communicate with one another. The real rules of grammar
include such things as the usual order of ad9ectives when there are two or more "is it
a lovely new black dress or a new black lovely dressB$F the preposition that
typically follows an ad9ectiveF or the correct use of definite, indefinite and Aero-
articles. #n the case of !nglish, they are e%plained in serious, evidence-based books
"or apps or websites$ about grammar, whether scholarly grammars "such as
'uddleston and Hullum 54-5$ or pedagogical grammars such as the ?ritish
+ouncils.
There is no doubt that these rules "the real rules$ can cause problems for people
learning !nglish as a second language. ?ut for native speakers, producing good
speech or writing depends on ;uite subtle factors such as style, tone, register, and
appropriacy to the situation. As for the rules of grammar, these are so hard-wired
that native speakers rarely break them.
The good news is that, thanks to new technology, we are living in a golden age for
language research, and it is easy to use corpus data in order to test the claims of
amateur pundits. (ore often than not, their confident assertions about what is right
and wrong are unsupported by evidence, and their claims to authority are based on
little more than snobbery. #n Through the Looking Glass, Alice talks to 'umpty
*umpty about what words mean6 The ;uestion is, said Alice, whether you can
make words mean so many different things. The ;uestion is, said 'umpty
*umpty, which is to be master 2 thats all. The prescriptivists 9ust want to be
master, thats all.