Blog Detail

Motivated Grammar

http://motivatedgrammar.wordpress.com

A lot of people make claims about what "good English" is. Much of what they say is flim-flam, and this blog aims to set the record straight. Its goal is to explain the motivations behind the real grammar of English and to debunk ill-founded claims about what is grammatical and what isn't.

• Added on: May 13th, 2008
• Country: United States
• Language: English

• Author: motivatedgrammar
• Listed in: Education & Learning Writing
• Tags: english grammar linguistics descriptivism

Recent Posts

• Senatorial abuse and apostrophe misuse

  Posted on Tuesday December 1st, 2009 at 10:14 in politics, english, writing, history, words, spelling, aaron burr, caning, plurals, duel, alexander hamilton, apostrophes

  Some short time ago, I stumbled upon a delightful blog known as the ragbag, which I quickly subscribed to after reading about five posts, in no small part because reading it reminds me of the sort of strange conversations I used to have in college wi...

• Book Review: I love “Origins of the Specious”

  Posted on Tuesday November 10th, 2009 at 14:33 in books, reviews, english, writing, book review, grammar, words, anglo-american differences, origins of the specious, patricia o'conner, stewart kellerman

  I am unabashedly in love with “Origins of the Specious”. It’s got a clever title, alluding to that controversially correct tome of Darwin’s, an homage to a field of study with even more ill-informed cranks than grammar. More...

• The real difference between “between” and “among”

  Posted on Tuesday November 3rd, 2009 at 12:35 in english, writing, history, grammar, words, prescription, prepositions, between, oed, among, etymology is destiny, mwdeu

  I apologize for not posting much recently, but I’ve been bogged down with being a grad student — submitting a paper, setting up a self-paced reading study, and moving apartments. But in the course of compiling that paper, I skimmed throu...

• Whoever v. Whomever! Cases collide! Match of the Century!

  Posted on Tuesday October 13th, 2009 at 12:57 in english, writing, grammar, words, case, agreement, ambiguity, errors, pronouns, george will, prepositions, disagreements

  Sometimes I worry that I’m not properly using this blog as a chance to get the word out about linguistics, so to rest my troubled mind, let’s talk a little about a component of syntactic theory: case. (Please stop clicking on the nearest ...

• You and myself

  Posted on Thursday October 1st, 2009 at 12:21 in english, writing, Me, editing, grammar, words, ratings, myself, pronouns, disagreements, questions to the reader, toni bowers

  Once again, I’ve got a question for you dear readers.  As I so regularly do in my spare time instead of cultivating rewarding interpersonal relationships, I was reading a piece on grammatical/punctuation errors, by Toni Bowers.  Of course, be...

• So it’s National Punctuation Day again

  Posted on Thursday September 24th, 2009 at 14:08 in style, english, writing, grammar, punctuation, apostrophes, hyphens, oxford comma, national punctuation day, september 24, pause and effect

  The orbit of the Earth being what it is, September 24th has come around again.  September 24th, for those of you who don’t have a copy of Chase’s Calendar of Events lying around, is National Punctuation Day.  But can I be honest with yo...

Comments & Reviews

This blog is currently rated a 4.00 out of a possible 5 based on 1 comment.

Christopher Warnasch

You had me at "prescriptivism must die."

Posted: August 19th, 2009 | More Reviews From ChrisWarnasch | Report This Comment

Post A Comment/Review

* Your IP is being logged.
* Your e-mail address is used only for verification purposes only and will not be sold, or shown publicly.
* No HTML tags allowed
* DO NOT use the Comments/Reviews to promote your own site.