Is syntax important?

[Eric]

The ways in which you build up a phrase, sentence, or paragraph are supposed to help, not hinder, the reader. Sometimes you wonder, especially in newspapers which are written in indecent haste for the next day, whether the rule is always being followed.

Take these sentences from yesterday's main headline article in the Daily Telegraph:

Labour has refused to set out details of its spending plans beyond 2011. Neither have the Tories, but Mr Lansley?s words signalled that any annual rise in health spending would be well below four per cent.

I am focussing on the words "refused" and "Neither".

Surely, the logic of the word "refused" (a negative idea, but not syntactically) would require the next sentence to start with "So have the Tories...".

[Clarissa]

You are quite right, Eric.

This is gibberish. The 'neither' and the 'refused most certainly do not belong together in his context.

People go on about the misplaced apostrophe and it is true that it crops up evrywhere now - even in foreigners' use of English. Lynn Truss tried to stop the wave of agrammatical writing and nonsense but it seems to be taking over on signs worldwide. Is it the texting, the new slang, advertising? I find it singularly irritating.

Not many people write focussing with double s these days.

[Eric]

One doesn't expect this kind of thing from the Torygraph. One imagined that their journos were all terribly-terribly silver-spoon types. And that someone called James Kirkup was probably the son of another Kirkup, now deceased, with Danish roots and a translator. But it was him what did it.

I always write "focussing". Otherwise you could read it as a Brit like "fow-KYOOZ-ing" in the same way as the Americans have a word "tra-VEEL-ing", meaning journeying, going on a trip. A contrary argument is that "focussing" could read to rhyme with "concussing". Take one's pick, is what I say.

The Telegraph or Times has an amusing section with wrongly written signs (or should that be signs', sign's, sines or scynes...?).

[Anne]

I find bad syntax, spelling and basic bad literacy absolutely unforgivable to be honest. I will admit I can make typos and spelling mistakes like the best of them. And, my grammer is not always perfect especially when I am typing quickly on forums for example. However, when I am writing professionally I make darn sure I get it right. And let's be fair there is no excuse. Even if you do find some elements of our written language difficult (in which case writers for the media etc should find another job) the computor does most of it for you these days anyway. I have to be honest, to me it reaks of laziness !! I read the BBC news online today and lost count of how many times I had to read certain parts because bad syntax and other errors made the reading so difficult. I actually went back on it before replying to this post just to make sure it hadn't been me that was the problem. (It's a Friday and that's my "does not compute" day). But no, it wasn't me.

Bad syntax can make the simplest sentence impossible to understand and in books and articles can make the reading hard work.

[Eric]

Anne says:

I find bad syntax, spelling and basic bad literacy absolutely unforgivable to be honest. I will admit I can make typos and spelling mistakes like the best of them. And, my grammer is not always perfect especially when I am typing quickly on forums for example. However, when I am writing professionally I make darn sure I get it right.

i agree dont i cos theres nothing worse than illetterates maskerading as being dillsexic.

One of most over mendaciously exaggerated forms of self-inflicted inequality is the claim that millions are dyslexic. There are a few thousand genuine and serious cases, people suffering from this very real psychological handicap, but many more are simply cashing in on the fancy term to cover up the fact that they larked around at school and are now unemployed and disgruntled.

As Anne points out, we all make typos and other mistakes, and nit-pickers can pounce on them and carp. But if you've never wanted to learn how to spell and construct a sentence, then hard luck if you are rejected for dozens of jobs and become a couch SMS-er. And ignoring capital letters and spelling, out of sheer trendiness, is a sure recipe for failure in any career involving any writing at all.

As I'm brushing up my Latin right now, after 40 years of neglect, I am learning once again to analyse the words in front of me and to make sure I understand what every single one is doing in the sentence. With Latin, this can be very tricky, as all sorts of words can end in the very same letter. So unless you have studied the declensions and conjugations in detail, you will make a hash of it - as I did at school. I'm trying to give myself another chance now, having learnt a few other, quite tricky, languages.

But English is our mother-tongue. With English, I think that the study of basic grammar has been abandoned at school level for the most, while clever linguists at university level invent all manner of incomprehensible terms for parts of the sentence, terms which only other clever linguists can understand. Those terms don't help the average person who simply wants to write an article in proper English, not even a thesis or novel.

The English language should be a tool, not a fetish. But tools have to be treated with respect.

[Mirabell]

I find bad syntax, spelling and basic bad literacy absolutely unforgivable to be honest. I will admit I can make typos and spelling mistakes like the best of them. And, my grammer is not always perfect especially when I am typing quickly on forums for example. However, when I am writing professionally I make darn sure I get it right. And let's be fair there is no excuse. Even if you do find some elements of our written language difficult (in which case writers for the media etc should find another job) the computor does most of it for you these days anyway. I have to be honest, to me it reaks of laziness !! I read the BBC news online today and lost count of how many times I had to read certain parts because bad syntax and other errors made the reading so difficult. I actually went back on it before replying to this post just to make sure it hadn't been me that was the problem. (It's a Friday and that's my "does not compute" day). But no, it wasn't me.

Bad syntax can make the simplest sentence impossible to understand and in books and articles can make the reading hard work.

so, the computor did not help you with your spelling here, no, at least the grammer was fine, this reaks funny.

or was that a joke and I was too dense to get it? I'm rather stupid so that might be the case.

prescriptivists who don't adhere to their own arbitrary rules are usually a hoot.

[Eric]

Mirror Belle, I said in my previous posting:

As Anne points out, we all make typos and other mistakes, and nit-pickers can pounce on them and carp.

Mirror, you will have to learn to foster that element of maturity called gentlemanly behaviour. I too noticed that Anne had misspelt "reeks" but assumed that this was a typo. Mirror, on the other hand has done exactly what I warned about: pounced on her mistake with a huge "ha, ha, ha".

Mirror, a little magnanimity is also part of maturity. Tolerance, explanation (as opposed to one-line put-downs), and revealing a little more about oneself, are also signs of maturity. I'm still fascinated by how your German and Russian selves fit together, and how come you know a lot of English, but you are exceedingly tight-lipped on that one.