My thanks to all of you for your suggestions! A few exceptions aside, you've all been very helpful.
Your Go To Grammar Reference Book
- Thread starter Cacophony
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Could you clarify what you mean by this? EoS is a style guide and not a grammar. Some of the "rules" in there can't even be phrased in the terms of grammar (e.g. "Make the paragraph the unit of composition" [didn't check if that's verbatim]).
A more honest (or more grammatically careful) Churhill(?) might have put this as:
This is the type of arrant pedantry with which I will not put up.
That's because most of the people who actually hold to that particular rule would (probably) have called "up" an adverb. There's a straw man in this example. (I, too, call "up" a preposition, but since I didn't formulate that rule, that's quite irrelevant.)
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EoS is indeed a style guide and not a grammar; I was using conformance to it and good grammar in parallel, rather than using one as an expansion or appositive to the other. They were both supporting examples for my broader point, which addressed Cliffhanger's: there are linguistic conventions that we follow not because they are correct in the abstract but because it is useful to us to do so in order to reach a particular audience in a particular way.
Indeed, but phrasing it like that would have constituted a failure to make his rhetorical point. Quibbling about the precise role of "up" in this context is no different than quibbling about whether one should end a sentence with a preposition.
His point was that good sense and clear meaning are more important than the pettifogging rules of language. The good sense and clear meaning of his snark caused him to elide a grammatical distinction. Works for me.
Thanks for the clarification.
Interestingly, I thought that both the "rule" and Churhill's comment are on a page:
That was probably his point. And it's a point made against people who think that the "rules of language" as they see it aid clarity. You're not going to convince them that they're wrong by misrepresenting what they say. You might rally others against them, though. I'm not interested in grammar wars. I've seen a discussion about whether "taxi" in "taxi driver" is a noun or an adjective. If they had bothered to communicate that might have been interesting (I like that sort of thing). But the fortification of positions... No, thank you.
An ironic distance to both positions would be ideal for me, but since I'm actually interested in the underlying phenomena... If I have anything to add to the actual topic of this thread it's: no one source is absolute. Read as many as you can. Take nothing too seriously. Don't judge people's cognitive capabilities or moral character on the language they use. Keep an open mind. (I've read mostly academic grammars, so I'm no help with the particulars in here.)
QFT. Which is also why grammar hangs constantly between frustrating & interseting.