Correctness

All this time you have been receiving corrections “in red” on the sentences of your written compositions—for both grammar and usage—because you have been evaluated by the standard, majority, “status” dialect, which is used in college as well as “newscasts, in formal business transactions, courtrooms, in all sorts of public discourse” (Kolln and Funk 10). If in these discourse communities people began to use ain’t regularly, its status would change to correct in these contexts. As Kolln and Funk explain, “Change is inevitable in a living organism like language. . .obvious, of course, when we compare the English of Shakespeare or the King James Bible” to modern versions (11). Yet, there are more recent examples as well that show how usage, which is how language is used by the people who speak and write it, changes what is considered correct over time.

At the 2016 Linguistic Society of America Conference, linguists voted the singular pronoun they word of the year. Wait, they is not singular you say; it’s plural. The singular pronouns would be he, she, or it. That’s right. Maybe you have had a sentence like the following corrected:

A student needs to make the time to study; otherwise, they may fail their classes.

Note the plural they referring to the singular noun student. In the past this would be an error in pronoun-antecedent agreement. You would need to edit the sentence by either making student plural by adding an -s or replacing they with he or she. If you made that “error” above though, you were ahead of language’s evolution; you were trying to use gender neutral language. Good job! In short, today the sentence above is now considered correct both in terms of usage and grammar.

A more recent example is with the word irregardless, which was not a word officially until July 2020. Regardless means without regard; therefore, most experts consider irregardless incorrect usage because adding the prefix -ir means without without regard (yes, without twice). However, because so many people use irregardless (to mean regardless), Merriam-Webster added it to the dictionary, labeling its usage as non-standard. In response many grammarians insist irregardless is not a real word, while the dictionary editors claim they are only recording how words are actually used.

Acknowledging language variety and evolution, in 1974 the National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE), a professional organization for English teachers, adopted the following resolution:

We affirm the students' right to their own patterns and varieties of language -- the dialects of their nurture or whatever dialects in which they find their own identity and style. Language scholars long ago denied that the myth of a standard American dialect has any validity. The claim that any one dialect is unacceptable amounts to an attempt of one social group to exert its dominance over another. Such a claim leads to false advice for speakers and writers, and immoral advice for humans. A nation proud of its diverse heritage and its cultural and racial variety will preserve its heritage of dialects. We affirm strongly that teachers must have the experiences and training that will enable them to respect diversity and uphold the right of students to their own language.

English teachers have generally enacted this resolution by teaching students to read and write in a standardized English dialect, discussed above, which is the general dialect of college, business, etc. and the dialect students may expect to learn. However, this dialect can be taught while respecting students’ native languages and dialects “without making students feel that the language spoken in their home, the language produced by their own internal grammar rules, is somehow inferior” (Kolln and Funk 12). How specifically to do this, however, continues to be debated.

While the issue of correctness is tricky when it comes to dialect, sentence-level editing issues often reach beyond dialect and may have rhetorical effects. As Rosenwasser and Stephen explain, “Is it fair of readers to reject your ideas because of the way you’ve phrased them? Perhaps not, but the fact is they often will. A great many readers regard technical errors as an inattention to detail that also signals sloppiness at more important levels of thinking. If you produce writing that contains such errors, you risk not only distracting readers from your message but also undermining your authority to deliver the message in the first place” (259-60). Researchers like Larry Beason studied how businesspeople react to errors like sentence fragments, misspelled words, fused sentences, and quotation marks “and found that such errors led to adverse judgments about the writers” (Blaauw-Hara 166). Therefore, it is important to take care with your writing projects in any dialect for any discourse community at the sentence level.

TRY THIS to edit for grammar and style. Edit the following scene from a narrative for a college writing assignment for both grammar and style. (1) Edit the passage for sentence fragments and consistent verb tense. (2) Then, edit for word choice, specifically choose more descriptive nouns and replace the “be” verbs (is, are, was, were) with strong verbs that show action. Your goal is to edit the sentences to better show the scene for your readers so they can picture it in their minds—so the scene better advances the purpose of your narrative. Feel free to get creative and add to the scene with your edits!

The performance was a total disaster. Being unprepared, the dancers are embarrassing themselves. Going across the stage awkwardly. Some were falling down off the stage. The audience is quiet, but some gasps were heard. Thankfully, it was finally over.

After completing the edits in your notes, click below for examples:

Edits for (1) sentence fragments and consistent verb tense

Edits for (2) word choice—descriptive nouns and strong verbs to “show rather than tell”

In this composition class you can get started with some habits that will help you enhance your academic and professional writing on the sentence level.