There’s an unfortunate tendency to believe that we are the inheritors of a Golden Age of Punctuation, and that people today are ruining it with their errant apostrophes, unnecessary quotation marks, and overabundant ellipses. I consider it unfortunate for two reasons. The first is that it exposes a vanity within us, a belief that we were decent enough in our day, but that the younger folks are ruining the brilliant language we built and maintained. The second is that it suggests that new teaching methods or new technology are primarily to blame for modern linguistic shortcomings, when the fact is that these errors existed back in our day as well. The problem isn’t (primarily) that kids aren’t being taught what we were, but rather that the new ideas failed to solve our problems.
So I really enjoy collecting examples of incorrect usage from the past, such as an apostrophe to mark a plural in a famous 1856 editorial cartoon or its with an apostrophe in a 1984 John Mellencamp music video, as a reminder that errors in English are not solely the province of the current age. At least some sources of these errors are timeless, and it’s just as important to fix the timeless ones as any uniquely modern sources.
The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette has put together a beautiful multimedia presentation of one of the great moments of Pittsburgh sports history, the 1960 World Series. The ’60 Series, which concluded 50 years ago today, was your standard David-Goliath series. The relatively-unknown Pittsburgh Pirates (David) were up against the nearly-universally-hated New York Yankees (Goliath), and through the first six games the Yankees had outscored the Pirates 46-17. Despite the lopsided scoring, the Pirates and Yankees had split the six games 3-3, setting up the deciding Game Seven in Pittsburgh. The final game was a back-and-forth affair that was capped with a walk-off home run by “Maz” (Bill Mazeroski), a popular second baseman known for his glove, not his bat. The home run moved Maz into the pantheon of Pittsburgh sports legends, and in the minds of a few ambitious Pittsburghers, into politics:
“President”. Maybe these fellows were just being temperate in their revelry, knowing that Maz wasn’t really in the running for the Presidency. But I think it’s more likely that they’re just your average guys, making the same average misuses as we do 50 years later. In fact, I’m reminded of a picture I found a month ago of some Steeler fans who’d made an error of their own:
![[Photo by Jared Wickerham/Getty Images]](https://motivatedgrammar.files.wordpress.com/2010/10/steelers-its.jpg?w=490&h=339 "i'ts")
So it goes.
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October 13, 2010 at 9:23 pm
Padraig
It’s good to see that there is a broad approach being applied here, in contrast to the over-prescriptive assertions by certain groups we all know.
However, I’m not sure about: “The problem isn’t (primarily) that kids aren’t being taught what we were, but rather that the new ideas failed to solve our problems.”
From information provided by long-term teachers in the UK, it seems that very little is being taught about grammar and punctuation, and certainly in comparison with the 50s to 70s. It’s quite likely that it is primarily because of teaching – where else do they learn these things in the main?
Of course, mistakes like those you mention were made in the past – to be honest, we all make them ourselves (more often than we’d probably admit). Mistakes are one thing, but if we spent a little more time checking our work, we’d soon find that most errors were oversights, rather than misuse through lack of understanding.
“If you don’t teach it, how will they ever learn?” To repeat what I’ve said before, it can be unsettling when you read English specialists at professor level stating that much of this isn’t so important. The key point, I believe, is that those who say this the most are those who have the greatest understanding – they know the details better than most. Yet, they are prepared to let standards slip, with the result that each successive generation of teachers will be less competent – thereby perpetuating the decline. How could it be any different?
Teachers are instructed to ignore exam/test mistakes that were penalised in previous generations, and to interpret/guess what they think was meant by the student. Can this be a healthy thing? How many people can recall receiving back work with red ink indicating the various mistakes, together with suggestions for improvement. Often, present-day students simply get a grade.
October 14, 2010 at 11:43 am
Stan
I love that “President” sign. Quotation marks as a means of emphasis? It wouldn’t be the first time.
As for the intriguing second photo, I think it signifies that it’s the apostrofly’s time 2 shine. Of course, it always is.
October 14, 2010 at 8:38 pm
Gabe
Padraig: You raise a good and valid point. First, I’m thinking that where I wrote “primarily” I maybe meant “solely”, and I might end up changing it at some point. But second, I didn’t come out and say this in the post, but I agree with you. I think it’s a distraction from the real problem to say that kids today don’t know how to write intelligently; I’m of the opinion that there hasn’t really been a time where the majority knew how to write intelligently, and it’s just that the increased amount of public writing in this modern age makes this more apparent.
The trouble is that I don’t really have a lot of suggestions to improve this situation. I learned grammar in some sense in elementary school, but to be honest, the only bit of it I remember learning is the difference between transitive and intransitive verbs, which I forgot until my first linguistics classes in college. So I’m reluctant to say that increased grammar instruction would really be very helpful, especially since a lot of the instructors would be wasting their students’ time with unimportant or wrong proscriptions. The best I can offer is that there ought to be more writing classes before you get to college. I became a decent writer largely because of having to write a lot in my AP classes in high school and also writing a lot in my spare time, and I think a lot of people don’t have that sort of experience in school. But what sort of a suggestion can I make out of that other than “Make your students write (and read) more?”
I’m not even sure how I feel about harsher grading on the tests. It reminds me of the troubles my friends who’re teaching Spanish here at UCSD face. In the introductory classes, the students’ essays are so bad that you have to only pick out their most egregious errors. If you only give them a few errors, they can keep those in their heads and remember to correct them in the future, and then you can go after the more minor flaws. If you give them all the errors at once, you’ll overload them. Similarly, if you have a really bad writer, you almost have to correct only the worst parts of their writing, especially if it’s not in a writing class. If you try to correct everything, you’ll swamp them. Again, this is a bad situation, but one I don’t have a simple solution for.
Also, I owe you a response to comment you left on a previous post. I’m working on it — it’s probably going to turn into a post of its own — but I just wanted to let you know why I hadn’t responded yet.
Stan: I like the emphasis explanation. In fact, the quotes around Maz might even be for emphasis; I think even in 1960 he might’ve been well-enough known to omit the quotes around his nickname.
October 15, 2010 at 6:53 pm
O'Donnell
I noticed that in the following sentence that you typed in your response:
“It reminds me of the troubles my friends who’re teaching Spanish here at UCSD face.”
you used the contraction “who’re” to refer to the Spanish instructors at your school.
WOW. I didn’t think you could be so heartless.
O’Donnell
October 16, 2010 at 11:48 am
Tom S. Fox
What exactly is wrong in the last image?
October 17, 2010 at 12:56 am
Padraig
@Tom S. Fox
The sign says ‘I’ts your time 2 shine’.
It should have read ‘It’s your time 2 shine’.
November 10, 2010 at 9:17 am
gacorley
I was also thinking the emphasis explanation, considering how common (if nonstandard) it is in common usage. Was this more common in the 60’s? I would guess it might be due to typewriter technology making other emphasis markers harder to put into print, but I have no idea.
O’Donnell: I don’t get it.