Two users of the English language—one an accomplished Australian author and the other an American freelance writer currently writing her debut novel—take strong, highly divergent positions with respect to its grammar and usage.
Clive James, a multi-awarded expatriate Australian author with more than 30 books and various other written works to his name, bewails the deterioration of English grammar and usage in Britain and Australia. In an article he wrote for
The Monthly in June 2006, he says that the state of the English language is Australia is bad, and that Britain itself—the birthplace of English—is the English-speaking country where the English language is falling apart most quickly. “In Britain, in 2006, the Labour government is still trying to fix the education system,” James says, “but surely one of the reasons it’s so hard to fix is that most of the people who should know how are themselves the system’s victims, and often don’t even seem to realise it. They need less confidence. Even when they are ready to admit there might be a problem, few of them realise that they lack the language to describe it.”
Read Clive James’ “The Continuing Insult to the Language” in The MonthlyRead also Clive James' poem lamenting the decline of English grammar, "Windows is Closing Down," in The MonthlyIn contrast, over at the United States, blogger Vanesa Nix declares in OregonLive.com’s Writers Block that she is waging a constant battle with the world of English grammar and its so-called rules. She says that words, grammar, sentences, paragraphs, letters, commas, styles, the em dash, colon and semicolon use all swirl in her head as to make her vomitous. “As a writer,” she complains, “my world is populated by Grammar Nazis—defined as those who believe they have the answer to creating the perfect written world, one in which a sort of grammatical ‘purification’ must take place. These ideas, much like those of their World War II counterparts, are not only misguided but dangerous.”
Read Vanessa Nix’s “Rail Against the Rules of Grammar…” in OregonLive.com ABOUT THE AUTHORS:Clive JamesClive James is the author of more than 30 books. He has published collections of literary and television criticism, travel writing, verse and novels, plus four volumes of autobiography,
Unreliable Memoirs,
Falling Towards England,
May Week Was in June, and
North Face of Soho. As a television performer, he has appeared regularly for both the BBC and ITV, most notably as writer and presenter of the “Postcard” series of travel documentaries. He helped to found the independent television production company Watchmaker and the Internet enterprise Welcome Stranger, one offshoot of which is a multimedia personal website,
www.clivejames.com. In 1992 he was made a Member of the Order of Australia and in 2003 he was awarded the Philip Hodgins memorial medal for literature.
Vanessa NixVanessa Nix is a writer living and working in Portland, Oregon. A member of the Portland based ITHeWBeT writer's group, she works as a freelance writer for
PDX Magazine,
LivePDX.com, the
St. John's Sentinel, and the
Oregonian as well as blogs on Writer’s Block for OregonLive.com. She is currently writing her debut novel,
Tourniquet, which weaves her passion for music into a tale of women on the brink of destruction, as well as a childhood memoir entitled
Father Fodder: Growing up Green. She is also collaborating with an illustrator in producing a children’s book entitled
I Love You More Than Artichokes.
