How Grammar Changes

1. Let's keep this between you and I.

WRONG. Children are so frequently corrected by parents and teachers when they say me that they cannot be blamed if they begin to think that this simple syllable is probably a naughty word.

Dialogues such as the following are certainly typical of many households.

"Mother, can me and Johnnie go out and play?"
"No, dear, not until you say it correctly. You mean 'May Johnnie and I go out to play?'"

"Who wants a jelly apple?"
"Me!"
"Then use the proper word."
(The child becomes a little confused at this point—there seem to be so many "proper" and "improper" words.)
"Me, please!"
"No, dear, not me."
"Oh. I, please?"
(This sounds terrible to a child's ear. It completely violates his sense of language, but he does want the jelly apple, so he grudgingly conforms.)

"Who broke my best vase?"
"It wasn't me!"
"Is that good English, Johnnie?"
"Okay, it wasn't I. But honest, Mom, it wasn't me—I didn't even touch it!"

And so, if the child is strong enough to survive such constant corrections, he decides that whenever there is room for doubt, it is safer to say I.

Some adults, conditioned in childhood by the kind of misguided censorship detailed here, are likely to believe that "between you and I" is the more elegant form of expression, but most educated speakers, obeying the rule that a preposition governs the objective pronoun, say "between you and me."

2. I'm your best friend, ain't I?

WRONG. As linguistic scholars have frequently pointed out, it is unfortunate that ain't I? is unpopular in educated speech, for the phrase fills a long-felt need. Am I not? is too prissy for down-to-earth people; amn't I? is ridiculous; and aren't I, though popular in England, has never really caught on in America. With a sentence like the one under discussion you are practically in a linguistic trap—there is no way out unless you are willing to choose between appearing illiterate, sounding prissy, or feeling ridiculous. "What is the matter with ain't I? for am I not?" language scholar Wallace Rice once wrote. "Nothing whatever, save that a number of minor grammarians object to it. Ain't I? has a pleasant sound once the ears are unstopped of prejudice." Mr. Rice has a valid point there, yet educated people avoid ain't I? as if it were catching. In all honesty, therefore, I must say to you: don't use ain't I?, except humorously. What is a safe substitute? Apparently none exists, so I suggest that you manage, by some linguistic calisthenics, to avoid having to make a choice. Otherwise you may find yourself in the position of being damned if you do and damned if you don't.

3. Five and five is ten.

RIGHT. But don't jump to the conclusion that "five and five are ten" is wrong—both verbs are equally acceptable in this or any similar construction. If you prefer to think of "five-and-five" as a single mathematical concept, say is. If you find it more reasonable to consider "five and five" a plural idea, say are. The teachers I've polled on this point are about evenly divided in preference, and so, I imagine, are the rest of us. Use whichever verb has the greater appeal to your sense of logic.

4. I never saw a man get so mad.

RIGHT. When I questioned a number of authors and editors about their opinion of the acceptability of mad as a synonym for angry, the typical reaction was: "Yes, I say mad, but I always feel a little guilty when I do." Most people do say mad when they are sure there is no English teacher listening; it's a good sharp word, everybody understands exactly what it means, and it's a lot stronger than angry, though not quite as violent as furious or enraged. In short, mad has a special implication offered by no other word in the English language; as a consequence, educated people use it as the occasion demands and it is perfectly correct. So correct, in fact, that every authoritative dictionary lists it as a completely acceptable usage. If you feel guilty when you say mad, even though you don't mean insane, it's time you stopped plaguing your conscience with trivialities.

5. Every one of his sisters are unmarried.

WRONG. Are is perhaps the more logical word, since the sentence implies that he has more than one sister and they are all unmarried. In educated speech, however, the tendency is to make the verb agree with the subject, even if logic is violated in the process—and the better choice here would be is, agreeing with the singular subject, every one.

6. He visited an optometrist for an eye operation.

WRONG. If the gentleman in question did indeed need an operation, he went to the wrong doctor. In most states, optometrists are forbidden by law to perform surgery or administer drugs—they may only prescribe and fit glasses. And they are not medical doctors. The M.D. who specializes in the treatment of eye diseases, and who may operate when necessary, is an ophthalmologist. (See Chapter 4.)

7. Do you prophecy another world war?

WRONG. Use prophecy only when you mean prediction, a noun. When you mean predict, a verb, as in this sentence, use prophesy. This distinction is simple and foolproof. Therefore we properly say: "His prophecy (prediction) turned out to be true," but "He really seems able to prophesy (predict) political trends." There is a distinction also in the pronunciation of these two words. Prophecy is pronounced PROF'-Ə-see; prophesy is pronounced PROF'-Ə-sī'.

8. Leave us not mention it.

WRONG. On the less sophisticated levels of American speech, leave is a popular substitute for let. On educated levels, the following distinction is carefully observed: let means allow; leave means depart. (There are a few idiomatic exceptions to this rule, but they present no problem.) "Let me go" is preferable to "Leave me go" even on the most informal of occasions, and a sentence like "Leave us not mention it" is not considered standard English.

9. If you expect to eventually succeed, you must keep trying.

RIGHT. We have here, in case you're puzzled, an example of that notorious bugbear of academic grammar, the "split infinitive." (An infinitive is a verb preceded by to: to succeed, to fail, to remember.) Splitting an infinitive is not at all difficult—you need only insert a word between the to and the verb: to eventually succeed, to completely fail, to quickly remember. Now that you know how to split an infinitive, the important question is, is it legal to do so? I am happy to be able to report to you that it is not only legal, it is also ethical, moral, and sometimes more effective than to not split it. Benjamin Franklin, Washington Irving, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Theodore Roosevelt, and Woodrow Wilson, among many others, were unconscionable infinitive splitters. And modern writers are equally partial to the construction.

To bring this report up to the minute, I asked a number of editors about their attitude toward the split infinitive. Here are two typical reactions.

An editor at Doubleday and Company: "The restriction against the split infinitive is, to my mind, the most artificial of all grammatical rules. I find that most educated people split infinitives regularly in their speech, and only eliminate them from their writing when they rewrite and polish their material."

An editor at Reader's Digest: "I want to defend the split infinitive. The construction adds to the strength of the sentence—it's compact and clear. This is to loudly say that I split an infinitive whenever I can catch one."

And here, finally, is the opinion of humorist James Thurber, as quoted by Rudolf Flesch in The Art of Plain Talk: "Word has somehow got around that the split infinitive is always wrong. This is of a piece with the outworn notion that it is always wrong to strike a lady."

I think the evidence is conclusive enough—it is perfectly correct to consciously split an infinitive whenever such an act increases the strength or clarity of your sentence.