1.2.1 Spelling Becomes Uniform and Moral

Fourteenth-century England was a site of sundry spelling. (Try saying that five times fast.) Very few people had written literacy, but for them, English was not uniform. As an English scribe, you might spell the same word multiple ways on the same page.¹ Your spelling might be influenced by other languages, particularly French (the early language of Parliament) and Latin (the early language of bureaucracy). You might specifically choose Latin spellings, to be paid more for longer words.

Correct English spelling didn’t exist yet, in other words. It wasn’t “anything goes” – scribes were disciplined for wandering attention and haste, for instance. But readers and writers were accustomed to varied English spelling.

Things changed when English started becoming the national language. The Court of Chancery, which at the time was like England’s courthouse and treasury in one, started issuing documents in English, and Chancery English became a guide for publishing houses.² As Chancery English spelling spread, so, too, did the idea of Standard English, which we can call standardized English to highlight that it is not an objective standard, but something made through an ongoing process.

Both the what and how of this process were important: What English was getting standardized, and how it was promoted, mattered. After Chancery clerks began writing in English in the early 15th century, the 1422 resolution of the London Brewers’ Association labeled English the language of the king, the ruling class, and the law. It said English was acquired by diligent writing and “setting aside” other languages. Chancery English was not just one version of one language, adopted for specific correspondence, in other words. It was correct writing, the writing of careful study and powerful people.

As time passed and more official documents appeared in English, there was less and less official room for anything but correct writing. Regional English writers and printers left local varieties behind, lest they be labeled provincial. Scottish writers experienced added pressure after the 1603 Union of the Scottish and English crowns. British colonists began taking correct writing across the globe, carrying print materials and proclaiming English the language of good, civilized people.

In turn, texts printed in correct writing, and the idea that correct writing indicated morality and progress, circulated simultaneously. While a full writing continuum included regional varieties, the part of the writing continuum considered acceptable was shrinking.

1.2.2 Correct English Becomes Patriotic

In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, prominent writers presented correct English as a national duty. In 1712, Jonathan Swift published “A Proposal for Correcting, Improving, and Ascertaining the English Tongue” in the name of “all the Learned and Polite Persons of the Nation.” In 1755, Samuel Johnson’s Dictionary of the English Language aimed to fix “improprieties and absurdities” in English, including regional variation, which he described as “capricious.”

On the other side of the Atlantic, Noah Webster took a similar stance while adding a heavy measure of US patriotism. His American Spelling Book in 1790 aimed to end regional US dialects and “purify” English, and his later American Dictionary of the English Language was written “for the continued increase of the wealth, the learning, the moral and religious elevation of character, and the glory of my country.”

These early, prominent sources helped expand and circulate myth 1. They not only suggested there was one correct English. They also proposed that national unity depended on it. Upholding correct English, they implied, was part of upholding a refined and moral nation.

1.2.3 Usage Wardens Tell Grown People How to Use English

English usage guides (also called style guides) promoted correct writing even more comprehensively than spelling books and dictionaries. Several usage guides emerged in the eighteenth century and became even more popular in the nineteenth century, when a new middle class sought the social advantages of English associated with the upper classes. By then, we know, the message that correct English was the language of the ruling class had been around for centuries.

Early usage guides were written by especially devout writing gatekeepers. They tended to be educated, well-established writers themselves – of sermons, of legal texts – who began publishing their own usage preferences for other writers. Prominent examples included Bishop of London Robert Lowth (a man “inclined to melancholy”), British philosopher and dissenting clergyman Joseph Priestley (who allowed, “It is possible I may be thought to have gleaned too much from the Latin idiom”), British educator Ann Fisher (a rare non-Londoner and woman in the group), Scottish minister and philosopher George Campbell (who wrote The Philosophy of Rhetoric we encountered in the opening), and retired US lawyer Lindley Murray (who promised Perspicuity in Speaking and Writing). Usage guides by these authors were among the most widely circulating books of their time, which would be like if a usage guide today competed with Harry Potter.

George Campbell’s The Philosophy of Rhetoric, for instance, was repeatedly printed, sold, and reviewed for broad audiences in periodicals like the Critical Review and Monthly Review. Campbell had no tolerance for variation and evoked a strict language caste system. “In the lower walks of life,” he wrote, people misapplied the language of “superiors.” They needed better understanding as soon as possible, so that they could “renounce their own [usage] immediately.”

Like Swift, Johnson, and Webster, Campbell approached correct English as a nationalist project, but he fixated on correct writing in particular. Spoken English could be “negligent” if necessary, he wrote. But correct writing would keep English “reputable, present, and national,” safeguarded from foreign incursion.

Other usage guides were infused with a similarly moralizing tone. One of Ann Fisher’s books was The Pleasing Instructor, or Entertaining Moralist. John Ash’s eighteenth-century Grammatical Institutes, a usage guide reprinted at least fifty times, opens with the platitude “The Knowledge of Letters is one of the greatest Blessings that ever God bestowed upon Man.” Lest readers think variation was part of Knowledge of Letters, Ash included an activity entitled “Promiscuous Exercises of False Syntax.”

Bishop Lowth, who appears to have been an unwitting gatekeeper,³ praised writing – which he said was rare – that showed “correctness, propriety, and purity of English style.” He also implied that his usage recommendations were not necessarily required for success, since “our best Authors have committed gross mistakes, for want of a due knowledge of English Grammar, or at least a proper attention to the rules of it.” We’ll see this same paradox in myth 2.

Correct writing regulation was especially championed by Lindley Murray, whose 1795 English Grammar defined rules and errors with unprecedented rigidity. Murray is seen as the father of what linguists call prescriptivism: prescribing what English should be like, rather than what it is like (which would be descriptivism). Murray’s English Grammar became the most popular usage guide for decades in Britain and the United States, offering what the contemporary book The Dictionary Wars called “a lifeline to success and an improved social status.” Today, Murray’s legacy lives on in several inflexible rules for correct writing.

1.4.1 We Limit Correct Writing (and Correct Writer)

With this myth, we limit correct writing – and the goodness and ability associated with it – to only a small part of the writing continuum. The rest of the continuum does not indicate goodness or ability; it might even threaten national safety and progress. Table 1.1 emphasizes the limited part of the continuum acknowledged in this myth, taken by many as the continuum itself.

Table 1.1“Correct writing” on the writing continuum

Within this overall consequence, there are several more specific consequences, which appear in Table 1.2.

Table 1.2Consequences of myth 1

1.4.2 English Spelling Is a Mess that Matters

Since Chancery English spelling was standardized and moralized, we’ve been stuck with it. This means that spelling expected across much of the writing continuum, and certainly the spelling of correct writing, is characterized by lasting oddities.

Some oddities reflect the early influence of other languages. For instance, we write quick (versus cwic) because Old English cw was replaced by the French qu. Other oddities come from pronunciation: Pronunciation evolves over time as words are spoken, so a lot of spelling that was intuitive in the past is not intuitive today. If you were describing a gnarly knight in 1400, for instance, you’d have pronounced the g and k.⁴ Even more confounding is that English has never had letters for all of its vowel sounds. For example, the letter “a” in about sounds different from the “a” in apple, but the same letter appears in the English spelling of those words.⁵

Basically, we’ve inherited spelling that has long been troublesome. Centuries ago, there were already complaints that Chancery English spelling didn’t guide pronunciation. In the early twentieth century, English was described as “antiquated, inconsistent and illogical” by spelling reformist R. Zachrisson. By the late twentieth century, English spelling was described by linguist Mario Pei as “an awesome mess.”

But here’s the rub: since this start of this myth, English spelling has been a mess that matters. It is a mess linked with morality and capability. A 1900 entry in The School Journal proclaimed: “If a man is a slipshod speller it is because he is a slipshod thinker … sure to act [on] inadequate moral ideals.” A 2015 Harvard Business Review linked spelling and credibility, warning: “People jump to all kinds of conclusions about you when they read documents you have written.”

1.4.3 English Variation Is a National Threat

In the many early sources that limited correct writing, variation within and beyond English posed a national threat. Campbell wrote about correct writing as something to be protected from foreign incursion. Johnson characterized English dialect variation as careless. Webster made correct writing tantamount to American freedom and national harmony. In these messages, correct writing more easily becomes a tool for discriminating against those who don’t use or value it. We will see this consequence again in other myths, but we see it begin resolutely with this myth.

1.4.4 Usage Preferences of a Few Are Usage Preferences for All

Many preferences of the eighteenth- and nineteenth-century usage wardens have lasted. This means that the preferences of writers from a narrow population and set of experiences (mostly educated, Christian and religious, economically well-positioned, white men in England and the US) have been the usage preferences represented in correct writing for centuries. We will see a prominent illustration in a moment, in the contemporary example of Strunk and White’s Elements of Style.

1.4.5 Narrow Standards Are High Standards

More important than particular rules or standards are what people believe about them. With this myth came the message that correct writing standards are not just narrow, or specific, standards; they are high standards. Josephine Baker’s Correct English, published between 1899 and 1950, was written so adults could keep up “a high standard of expression” after their schooling and thereby avoid “bad English.” Similar messages appeared in popular periodicals such as The Spectator and The Rambler in the UK and Time and Harper’s Magazine in the US.

Likewise, nineteenth-century university leaders promoted correct writing as the highest standard for language and moral development. In 1828, University of London professor Thomas Dale said the aim of education was “to inculcate lessons of virtue, through the medium of the masters of our language.” Charles Eliot, whom we met at the start of the chapter, linked correct writing to “the higher moral interest and greater promise” of English-speaking political and social institutions. At Harvard, Eliot established English entrance exams and courses that valued correct writing above other writing or languages. (More generally, Eliot objected to all kinds of diversity, as we will see in myth 3.)

The idea that narrow standards are excellent standards makes it hard to challenge or expand correct writing. A century after Eliot, critics denounced Webster’s Third New International Dictionary of the English Language for including ain’t, despite its widespread use and linguistic similarity to won’t. The outcry highlighted the lasting idea that when English dictionaries and usage guides include diverse usage, they fail to be what applied linguist David Brown describes as “upholders of propriety.” This is a good example of how myth 1 fuels language regulation mode: Propriety is associated with only one part of the continuum, and addressing a fuller continuum of English is not allowed.

For contemporary evidence of this myth, we can look to a particularly famous usage guide, Strunk and White’s The Elements of Style. The Elements of Style sold more than 10 million copies between 1959 and 2009 alone, often as a gift for secondary graduates heading to college. Like earlier usage guides, The Elements of Style moralizes correct writing, equating written style with human character. The Elements of Style also illustrates the passing of language regulation from one generation to another: Strunk was White’s college professor, and when White became an author, he expanded and published Strunk’s usage rules in a new book.

The fiftieth anniversary celebration of The Elements of Style in 2009 included a New York Times article by a seasoned reporter, who opens by second-guessing his writing:

After several paragraphs of similar praise and paranoia, the article cites a University of Edinburgh linguistics professor who shows how The Elements of Style severely simplifies English. Strunk, however, had a gatekeeper’s rejoinder for critiques such as these, which he passed on to White: “It is worse to be irresolute than to be wrong.”

“It is worse to be irresolute than to be wrong” does not seem like great advice in many situations (flying a plane, performing an amputation), but it has particular consequences when it comes to writing. Being irresolute about correct writing leaves room for questioning and exploring. Being wrong means limiting writing despite pervasive language variation. Strunk and White’s resolute boundaries around correct writing might especially impact those without their confidence – a confidence so complete that the two authors break their own rules in The Elements of Style without acknowledgment.

Yet the tone of The New York Times article is one of wistful appreciation for just that sort of rigid confidence, which upholds high standards: “Unless someone is willing to entertain notions of superiority,” White is quoted as saying, “the English language disintegrates.”

The Elements of Style has not been updated to account for new forms of communication, because, explains the publisher, its popularity shows that its advice is timeless. And so the guide continues to circulate widely, emphasizing the correct writing error, avoiding change and variation. Language regulation, The Elements of Style illustrates, can be at once limiting and well-loved.

1.4.6 Formality and Informality Are Enemies

Early usage guides separated formal and informal English, depicting correct writing as formal and careful and all other writing as informal and careless. Today, students continue to receive this advice from a range of sources.⁶ The University of Southern California and the University of Melbourne, for instance, advise avoiding first person pronouns, phrasal verbs, and abbreviations in college writing. While personal correspondence with familiar audiences calls for informal usage, the advice suggests, college writing calls for formal writing no matter the task.

In consequence, informal and formal writing are enemies, not neighbors or friends, their respective writing patterns separate rather than mutually illuminating and sometimes overlapping. The formal end of the continuum is considered correct, and it is exclusively prioritized and tested in school despite the fact that most of the continuum is characterized by informal patterns. Even ongoing calls for Plain English don’t always call for informality, but rather for less technical jargon.⁷

1.4.7 We Tolerate Confusing References to Grammar

Many claims about incorrect or bad grammar refer to one of two things: conventions or usage preferences. By conventions, I mean norms for spelling, punctuation, what is called “wrong word,” and capitalization, rather than what is grammatically possible in English. And usage preferences are just that: preferences for usage, rather than what is grammatically possible in English.

For instance, a recent online list called “15 grammar goofs that make you look silly” emphasizes conventions rather than grammar. No fewer than ten of the fifteen concern words that sound the same but are different – for example, it’s versus its, your versus you’re, and their versus there. These homophones are impossible to note in speech, and readers can easily decipher the intended meaning. Often, they are interchangeably used in informal digital writing such as texting. Still, the use of “terrible grammar” to refer to conventions is common. We’ve seen some examples in this chapter, and we will see many more throughout the book.

1.4.8 We Miss Opportunities for Learning and Connecting

When we only value correct writing, we only value part of the continuum. We only reward those writers with exposure and practice with correct writing. We prioritize and moralize only the language use and culture of a highly limited mold. In the shady reality of this myth, in other words, the son of Bishop Lowth faced a life of presupposed opportunity and moral rectitude, no matter his capability or character.

We support unfair treatment, as a result, and we miss opportunities. We miss different values and ways of relating. We miss connections across a full continuum of writing and writers.

1.5.1 Standardized Spelling Depends on Memorization and Practice

Correct writing spelling, expected on most of the writing continuum, is an awesome mess. To use this mess, you need practice and memorization. Still, spelling practice is not the same as writing practice: Spelling instruction appears to improve spelling skills but not writing skills. You can be a hardworking, capable writer, but you won’t know how to write gnarly knight unless you have practiced its peculiar, outdated spelling.

The informal end of the writing continuum has more flexible spelling norms, meaning spelling can change more easily and intuitively. For example, text message spelling often includes nite for night or u for you, which approximate English sounds (or phonemes). Indeed, research shows that children who use textisms have enhanced language skills, which researchers attribute to awareness of English sounds and letters.

1.5.2 Grammar Is What Is Possible and Meaningful in a Language

The linguistic definition of grammar is what is meaningful and possible in a language – the norms for forming words, phrases, and sentences, regardless of usage preferences or conventions. Sound (or phonological) norms in English, for instance, prevent us from pronouncing the p sound in pneumonia. Word (or morphological) norms in English allow us to add -ly to change adjectives to adverbs (e.g., quick to quickly), and to use verb contractions like ain’t or won’t to express negation. In other words:

• English grammar does not mean “correct writing usage preferences” such as “do not use ain’t.”

• English grammar does not mean “correct writing conventions” such as correct writing spelling, punctuation, and capitalization.

• English grammar is what is possible and meaningful, across the full writing continuum.

This definition means, for instance, that the formal phrase a writing continuum falls within English grammar, and the informal abbreviation idk (for I don’t know) falls within English grammar.

In Table 1.3, the left-hand column follows what is grammatical (read: possible and meaningful) in English. The nouns follow articles the or a, and the sentences (including the abbreviation idk), use subject-verb-object order. The right-hand column (marked with *) includes ungrammatical (read: not possible) examples. In these examples, we can’t decipher meaning.

Table 1.3English grammar

Usage preferences and conventions are not grammar. When correct writing usage preferences or conventions are not followed on the left of the continuum, we might pause because we expect something different. But the full writing continuum is possible and meaningful within English grammar.

1.5.3 Terrible People Can Be Good Writers, Terrible Writers Can Be Good People

Correct writing is an indication of practice, not goodness. The US terrorist called the Unabomber wrote in correct writing. Civil rights activists who couldn’t write English fought for equal opportunity and fair treatment for all races. Other examples are everywhere around us, from prominent leaders to unknown children. Producing the narrow version of English that became correct writing does not make a person good.

1.5.4 Diverse Usage Is Similar

Writing across the continuum, whether it is considered correct writing or not, shares several grammatical patterns like the ones we just saw. The famous writer Maya Angelou describes this variation in her memoir I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings. Angelou offers two example sentences, one she associates with school and one she associates with meeting in the street.

Angelou’s two examples follow what is grammatical in English. For one thing, they follow the same subject-verb-object structure we’ve seen already, which has been in English for centuries. Using that structure, the first example uses the present progressive be associated with correct writing (“That is not unusual”), while the second example uses habitual be associated with African American or Black English (“It be’s like that sometimes”).

Angelou’s examples also illustrate that diverse usage includes many of the same words – particularly pronouns, conjunctions, and prepositions (or closed lexical categories). For instance, both Angelou’s examples include the pronoun that, a word that has been around for more than 800 years.

In a final example of similarities, writing across the continuum follows parallel morphological processes. Morphological processes dictate what is grammatical (read: possible and meaningful) for forming new words in English. If we’ve grown up writing English, we know the morphological process I mentioned earlier – adding -ly to make something an adverb – even if we don’t consciously know we do. Here’s another example. I scuba dive with a company, Little Cayman Divers, that has this phrase on the back of their staff shirts shown in Figure 1.1: Okayest dive masters in the world.

Figure 1.1

Okayest follows English morphology

If you are familiar with written English, you recognize okayest because it follows morphological rules that dictate what is grammatically possible and meaningful in English. According to English morphology, we compare adjectives with one or two syllables by adding -er (e.g., cool becomes cooler). We add -est to make something superlative (cooler now becomes coolest). This is how our knowledge of English morphology, consciously or not, makes okayest funny, since okay itself means mediocre.

The upshot is that not only is a full continuum of writing important in our lives, but also, the full continuum shares fundamental similarities. Only the myth glasses, as old as this myth, make okayest “not real English.” It might be on the informal part of the continuum, but okayest is grammatically possible and meaningful in English. Meanwhile, Microsoft Word grammar checker, disciple of this myth, is alerting me to change okayest.

1.5.5 Diverse Usage Is Correct

While some grammatical structures and words are used across the writing continuum, some language patterns are distinct according to where they are on the continuum. Distinct does not mean better. Language regulation mode ignores the continuum, pretending correct writing patterns always apply. But language exploration mode looks across the continuum for overlapping and distinct patterns, all of which tell us something about written English.

To illustrate, we’ll look at two patterns that differentiate informal and formal writing. One pattern – lots of nouns – appears in what is considered correct writing. The other pattern – fewer nouns, more verbs – appears on the rest of the writing continuum.

1.5.6 Linguistic Equality and Social Inequality Are for Real

As we can see in the writing continuum, closer to the truth is that we have a range of writing patterns that are grammatically possible and meaningful in English. Closer to the truth is that all of these patterns are linguistically equal: They are all rule-governed and responsive to different writing situations.

Even so, we have hundreds of years of the opposite message: that only spelling dating back to the fifteenth century is correct; that only usage-guide preferences are correct. Also closer to the truth, therefore, is that all language use is not socially equal, despite being linguistically equal. Many of us learned only language regulation mode: to judge writers and writing in terms of correct and incorrect usage. We did not learn language exploration mode: to observe writers and writing in terms of patterns accurate in different situations.

1.5.7 Writing Is on a Continuum of Shared Purposes and Distinct Patterns

Along with some grammatical norms, writing across the continuum shares five purposes that facilitate communication. In other words, there are five things all shared writing does, though how it does them depends on the writing. Here are the five purposes, with example patterns.

1. (1) Writing has cohesion

   • To signal new input or ideas, written English includes emojis, new paragraphs, or transitions such as also or however.

2. (2) Writing makes connection

   • To address writers and readers, written English includes specific uses of first- and second-person pronouns, and citations or other references.

3. (3) Writing shows focus

   • To emphasize different kinds of topics, written English includes a balance of nouns and verbs, or many noun phrases, and it includes active verbs, or passive verbs.

4. (4) Writing shows stance

   • To show doubt, certainty, or a positive or negative attitude, written English includes boosters, hedges, and generalizations.

5. (5) Writing follows usage norms

   • To follow norms, written English includes flexible and rigid spelling and punctuation conventions, and informal or formal usage preferences.⁹

Along with the fundamental similarities we discussed earlier, the five shared purposes help us understand and use a range of writing. Meanwhile, the different patterns allow us to use different writing for different ends. These different patterns are correct for different kinds of writing, and they distinguish the two ends of the continuum. On the left side near informal text messages, writing is more informal, personal, and interpersonal; on the right side near formal published books, writing is more formal, impersonal, and informational. For example, even when informal text messages share information, they have more patterns focused on personal reactions and interpersonal connection with others. And though some academic books share personal anecdotes, overall they have more informational patterns than personal or interpersonal ones. This is why linguists say that “phraseology and epistemology are indissolubly interlinked,” which is a formal, informational, impersonal way of saying that different language patterns support different goals and values.

Sometimes, the same feature is used differently, depending on where it is on the writing continuum. First-person pronouns are a good example, as we saw in the introduction. Writing on the left of the continuum tends to use first-person pronouns in text-external ways, emphasizing personal experiences and reactions, while writing on the right side of the continuum tends to use first-person pronouns in text-internal ways, emphasizing the information that the writers are writing about.

To capture purposes and patterns on the writing continuum, I’ve added rows in Table 1.4. We’ve already seen some grammatical norms shared across the continuum, and these appear at the bottom of the continuum.

Table 1.4Writing continuum purposes and patterns

In a full writing continuum, we have shared purposes and patterns, as well as important differences. And yet: From the Court of Chancery to The Elements of Style, this myth tells us only one kind of writing is correct.

Closer to the truth is that we are all limited by this myth, because we learn less about the full writing continuum. The far right of the continuum is treated as correct and wholly separate from other parts of the continuum. Those who do not practice or value that part of the continuum are told they are bad writers. They may have been told they are careless or lazy besides.

At least here, we have dwelled with correct writing a different way, as just one part of a full, connected writing continuum. As we address other myths, we’ll keep exploring the full continuum, adding examples from written English over time. But we will continue to see correct writing refer to the narrow version of written English we get in this myth.