From Dr Madsen Pirie Sir: Lynne Truss has done grammar
a great service by helping people to use it properly in a living, changing language.
Benedict le Vay is wrong in every example he cites of the alleged grammatical errors of Lynne Truss. She communicates successfully and clearly with her use of 'anticipated', 'all' (of a given list), 'first', and 'thankfully'. Le Vay's use would make him misunderstood, especially with thankfully, which has not been used his way for a generation. Truss also correctly uses question marks to denote puzzlement as well as questions.
It could be that he is simply unlucky in happening to be wrong on each attempted criticism, but such consistent error implies an incorrect paradigm. It could be that, while Lynne Truss is writing about a language in which people communicate, Benedict le Vay concerns himself with something that exists in the pages of books gathering dust on library shelves.
Most of us know the rules which a supercilious pedant might cite in an attempt to belittle people. We also know when they were superseded by different rules, and why they changed.
Madsen Pine
London SW1
Previous page
