Rebel with a Clause: Tales and Tips from a Roving Grammarian

Introduction: A Table Unfolded

In the late afternoon of September 21, 2018, I exited my New York apartment building carrying a folding table and a big sign reading GRAMMAR TABLE. I crossed Broadway to a little park called Verdi Square, found a spot at the northern entrance to the Seventy-Second Street subway station, propped up my sign, and prepared to answer grammar questions from passersby.

This might seem bizarre to some, but to me it felt like destiny. I’ve been teaching writing and grammar for decades. I love grammar. I’ve studied twenty-five languages for fun. My bookshelves are filled with grammar and usage books, carefully alphabetized by language from Albanian to Zulu. I majored in German in college and earned a master’s degree in comparative literature, specializing in African American and German writers. One of the greatest pleasures of my life has been participating in a world of reading and literature and beautiful, varied words. I love exploring how they are put together, not just in English, which is the focus of this book, but in all the languages I have studied.

The Grammar Table idea originally came to me a couple of months before that inaugural fall afternoon. From the moment the whim first entered my head, I knew I had to make it happen. Waiting for the furnace days of summer to end, I took care of the practical details. I researched opaque city regulations before determining that dispensing free grammar advice qualified as free speech; I studied the folding table market and ordered my favorite and most grammar-friendly, a lightweight forty-eight by twenty inches; and I made a Grammar Table sign, adding to it what I thought were helpful discussion-inspiring suggestions, such as capitalization complaints, semicolonphobia, and comma crisis.

That September day, it took me approximately thirty seconds to start getting visitors. One of the first questions involved a spousal apostrophe dispute. A woman came up to me with her husband, two kids, and a complaint. Handing me her cell phone, she told me her husband had sent her a text message with a misplaced apostrophe. The evidence was right there on the screen: Another fun afternoon for the Benson’s! I told her she was right: no apostrophe. The husband laughed—he had no painful grammar sensitivities—and off went the apostrophe-free Bensons to enjoy their afternoon.

Some people just need someone to smile at them politely while they’re complaining, and then they go home happier. I like listening to people, and I’m genuinely curious about them, which is why I included a Vent! option right on my Grammar Table sign. I’ve heard a lot of complaints—about apostrophes used for plurals, missing commas, extra commas, run-on sentences, spelling snafus, peripatetic participles, and more.

Sometimes my interventions soothe the insecurities of the questioner. A tiny Filipino woman—maybe five feet tall, about forty years old—approached the table holding the hand of a tinier girl. She wanted to know how to pronounce finance. Did the word start out like fine and have the stress on the first syllable, or did it begin like fin and have the stress on the second? When she heard that her second-syllable stress was fine, even preferable in the opinion of one of the experts whose books lay on the Grammar Table, she started jumping up and down. This is neither hyperbole nor metaphor: she literally jumped up and down and made her smaller companion’s arm sail in sync with her excitement. Someone had been telling her she was wrong, and now she knew she wasn’t, and she felt better!

That turns out to be a common experience for people who approach me: teachers or co-workers or others in their lives have made them feel bad about their use of language. But mine is not the Grammar Judgment Table, and I will listen to whatever is on people’s minds, even when they arrive with allegations rather than questions: Millennials are ruining the language, or No one knows how to write anymore because it’s all text-speak. I have heard quite a few speeches about how young people are destroying English, but young people, even children, ask some of the best questions of all, so I remain profoundly unconcerned.

I know how deep people’s relationship to grammar runs, because I’ve been teaching adults of all socioeconomic and educational backgrounds for thirty years. Language is connected to people’s sense of self and their sense of power. There is a lot of grammar insecurity; people regularly wish they knew more about the building blocks of the words they use. Whoever the Grammar Table visitors are, I want them to feel good about the relationship they have with language today and, if they want to acquire new knowledge, hopeful about where they might end up.

In the beginning, I regularly sat out by the same Seventy-Second Street subway stop on Broadway. That station disgorges thousands of people every evening during rush hour. However, I was soon on the move to other locations around town. Language lovers are numerous and ubiquitous in New York. At Grand Central one day, I ended up surrounded by eight Metropolitan Transit Authority workers in uniform—five men and three women. At first I thought they were going to tell me I had to leave, but instead the encounter became an MTA grammar confessional.

One told me, I can’t tell the difference between ‘your’ and ‘you’re.’ Another complained, I don’t know what to do with the semicolon. A third MTA employee, a woman, confessed, I can’t pronounce ‘ambulance’ right. I keep saying ambilance! Her co-workers agreed that yes, she did do that! Then a six-foot-seven employee jumped in. I can do just two things, he said. I can reach things and I can write. But you can’t make money as a writer, so I work for the MTA instead!

Within six months, I was answering grammar questions across state lines. That’s because after the positive response to the Grammar Table in New York, my husband and I had the same thought: Road trip! And off we went. Brandt Johnson, my partner in life as well as in a communication skills training firm—and a language lover himself who is constantly making pronoun antecedent jokes around the home—has now filmed hundreds of Grammar Table encounters in forty-seven states, footage that he is turning into a Grammar Table documentary. We were going for fifty, but the pandemic arrived in the US before we reached Hawaii, Alaska, and Connecticut.

Well, we did actually reach Connecticut, but Brandt and I were hungry and got pizza, which was delicious, so then we got more pizza, and then it got dark and cold, so we thought, We can come back anytime, but then COVID-19 came first and we couldn’t. As I write this, however, plans for the missing three states are in the works.

Because of the Grammar Table, I have met thousands of people I would never have known otherwise. A grandmother in Montana told us she had just been diagnosed that day with dementia, and Brandt and I each gave her a big hug and tried not to cry. A construction worker in Alabama revealed a secret fascination with fountain pens. In New York, a fashionably dressed young woman told me, I am an obsessive lover of footnotes, then pulled out her phone and showed me a photo of her foot with ⁷ ibid tattooed on it. I had met my first footnote fetishist!

My visitors are diverse, and often really different from me in outlook and experience. We have conversations, however, that are filled with humor and feeling for the complex linguistic glue that binds us together as human beings and distinguishes us from other living creatures. Some of the experiences are so moving that I have to steady my voice when I reply.

It is important to me that people who don’t speak English natively, or at all, feel welcome. That’s why my sign says ANY LANGUAGE! I love and welcome discussions of all languages, and I treasure opportunities to exercise my skills in ones I speak or have studied. To date, Grammar Table conversations have extended well beyond English to cover topics in Spanish, German, Arabic, Polish, French, Urdu, Chinese, Italian, Russian, Hebrew, Portuguese, Japanese, Tagalog, Turkish, Sinhalese, Armenian, Bengali, Lakota, Greek, Indonesian, Latin, Hindi, Korean, Dutch, and more.

In this book, I share some of my experiences at the Grammar Table, divided by topic, framed with guidance, and illustrated with real-life examples from around the country. You may recognize some of the questions as ones you have, too. Language is powerful: it enables large, organized collections of people to live together, to cooperate, to experience joy and wit, and to improve the human condition. It is a thing to celebrate.

At a time of deep divisions within the United States, my experiences have reminded me that it is still possible for strangers who disagree to talk instead of fight—and even if they do fight, to do so without hating. After all, how mad can one really get about a comma?* The quotidian is calming. We all poop, and we all punctuate.

Because* so many of the Grammar Table encounters were filmed, thanks to Brandt, I had a massive amount of documentation to use in writing this book. I have edited dialogue for clarity, length, and coherence, and have also altered identifying details, especially in cases where people told me something personal that they might find embarrassing. I changed most names. (To those who wanted to be publicly identified discussing their favorite grammar question, I apologize!) Finally, to avoid repetition and enhance explanations, I sometimes amended spur-of-the-moment sentence examples I used while chatting on city streets.

In each new city or town, we had to find the spots with the best grammar traffic. This was sometimes challenging. Our New York neighborhood has a population density of 110,000 people per square mile, as well as a pedestrian culture; most locations around the country did not provide the firehose of grammar questions I get outside our local subway station. Still, as long as there are places with people, there will always be places with people who want to talk about grammar.

Another consideration, a big one, was that we needed locations from which we wouldn’t promptly be expelled by security or police. In Nevada, we drove around Boulder City for a while before we found an appealing spot outside a store called Sherman’s House of Antiques. The store owner kindly let us set up the Grammar Table and camera equipment on the sidewalk in front of the store’s entrance, amid antique chests of drawers and a life-size carving of the Blues Brothers.

People who like to browse antiques apparently also like discussing words, because I had a lot of visitors on that cold, gray afternoon. We have to stop and talk to this woman about grammar, I heard a passing woman say to the man with her. She told me, Do you know I was traumatized in sixth grade by all that sentence diagramming? I was so terrible at it. I didn’t like grammar, but I do now, as an adult. I wish I could study it.

There are options for that, I said.

Yeah, said the woman. So what do you do? I explained the Grammar Table.

Is this like a therapist, like for five cents? she asked, alluding to the Peanuts character Lucy with her advice stand.

I do like to think that I provide some therapeutic calm to people who are distraught about grammar, I said, and she laughed. Everyone uses words, and everyone has a different relationship to language.

Now, please lie down on a nice couch with this book and let’s have some grammar therapy.

1

A National Obsession: The Oxford Comma

Whether I am sitting out there in the cold, the heat, the morning, the evening, a big city, or a tiny town, there is one thing I am approached about more than any other topic, by far, and that is the Oxford comma.

Oxford comma, yes or no?

Oxford comma or bust!

A woman in North Dakota told me, Oh my god, I had somebody call me a coastal elite because I was talking about the Oxford comma!

In case this term is unfamiliar to you, here is a sentence containing an Oxford comma:

A priest, a nun, and a sloth walked slowly into a bar.

The Oxford comma is the comma you see right before the and toward the end of that list. The term also applies to a comma before or in a list, though those are less common.

For her seventh birthday, my daughter is hoping for a stuffed brontosaurus, a Venus flytrap, or slime-eating monsters.

For something that could be mistaken for a speck of dirt on a page, the Oxford comma—known less snootily, but also less broadly, as a serial comma, and sometimes also as a series comma—inspires strong attachments. It is one of the emotional hot-button issues of our time.

Tell us what the Oxford comma is, said a thirty-something man named Dan in Red Cloud, a dot of a Nebraska town best known for having been home to O Pioneers! and My Ántonia author Willa Cather. I really want to know.

He was with his wife, Cori, whose straight brown hair hung far down her back, for a busy summer weekend of Willa Cather tourism. I was sitting in front of the National Willa Cather Center in the Main Street Historic District, next to a pickup truck from whose bed* a friendly woman was selling fresh corn.

It appears in a list, I said, and began writing a sample sentence for them on a notepad. I ordered books, I read aloud as I wrote, from Willa Cather, Theodore Dreiser, and . . . Who should be my third?

Who’s our favorite? Cori asked her husband. Oh, James Joyce!

James Joyce, I said, adding it to the end of my list. You are hard-core!

"We read Finnegans Wake, Cori told me. Together, out loud, and it started the second day we knew each other. Our first date!"

When I was in high school, said Dan, "there was an upperclassman I looked up to. He would brag about how he had read Finnegans Wake, and that was always a life goal for me. And so—"

—we made it happen, Cori finished his sentence.

We read it together out loud over three years, said Dan. "And it was hilarious—laughs on every page. And then I ran into this same guy, he was working in a grocery store, and I’m like, ‘I did it! Remember when you told me you read Finnegans Wake? My girlfriend and I read it together!’ And he said, ‘Aw, man, I was just BS-ing, I never read that.’ So now we’re the only ones we know who have ever read it."

I was impressed. I showed Dan and Cori the finished sentence.

I ordered books by Willa Cather, Theodore Dreiser, and James Joyce.

The comma after Dreiser is the one they call the Oxford comma, I said.

I do it, Cori said. I do it all the time!

Is that good? asked Dan.

You can do it either way, I said. "It’s highly encouraged by The Chicago Manual of Style." I held up Chicago as a visual aid. "This book is used by a lot of people in the publishing industry. But The Associated Press Stylebook, which governs a lot of what you see in newspapers, doesn’t advocate using it unless it’s necessary for clarity."

I’d be in the hard-core camp, said Cori.

While we were talking, an education specialist from the Willa Cather Foundation arrived, and the Willa Cather tourists caught her up on the critical details of our conversation.

I heart the Oxford comma, said the specialist, Rebecca, forming a heart shape with her hands.

Why? asked Dan. Why is it important to you?

Because there are contextual things that will potentially be misconstrued if you don’t have that last comma, Rebecca explained.

So you feel like it’s lazy to leave it off, Dan said. These people lack character.

No, now you’re putting words in my mouth, she replied.

To clarify Rebecca’s point, I offer you these two sentences from what may be the most shared punctuation meme* in meme history:

We invited the strippers, JFK, and Stalin.

We invited the strippers, JFK and Stalin.

In the meme, the first sentence is applauded for its upstanding use of an Oxford comma, while the second is illustrated with JFK and Stalin dressed as strippers. I am unimpressed. I do not feel concerned that anyone reading the second sentence will mistakenly think John F. Kennedy and Joseph Stalin were the invited strippers. Meme accuracy is not a prerequisite for meme popularity, however, and the American Oxford comma obsession rages on, even as plenty of people in other languages and countries keep right on functioning without one. That comma may be a national obsession, but it is surely not a global one.

I think it’s about the cadence, said Cori.

I’ve started a brawl, Dan said.

A grammar brawl! said Cori.

If you could have a brawl, I said excitedly, that’d be great for the Grammar Table documentary!

* * *

It is fact that some people are reluctant to approach the Grammar Table. Perhaps they fear a quiz, or a hard sell, or a scolding, or—if Brandt is filming—the cameras. On a late December day in Verdi Square, a group of three young men and three young women were eyeing me and the Grammar Table from afar. They appeared to be discussing best next steps.

Would you like to visit? I semi-yelled, in the semi-yell I have perfected for Grammar Table use, so that I can sound welcoming while still being heard across parks and noisy subway stations. Nothing bad will happen, I added as they headed over.

The ringleader, Tucker, was a cute, clean-cut guy with closely cropped light brown hair. All right, he said as he approached, rubbing his hands together. I have to vent about something. The Oxford comma I feel is an important part of grammar, and so many people don’t use it, and it frustrates me.

As he spoke, he looked up at the sky and clapped in time to his words. What—clap—is your—clap—"opinion"—clap—"on that?" he asked.

Do your friends all share your point of view? I asked.

Yes, said Kim, a young woman in a maroon shirt—sternly, with her arms crossed.

I believe they do, said Tucker, the Oxford comma ringleader.

Is that why you’re friends? I asked. You’re friends because you’re in sync about the Oxford comma? My feelings about it are not as strong as yours.

Okay, said Tucker, eyeing me suspiciously.

I’ve gone through multiple Oxford comma phases in my life, I said. When I worked as a freelance reporter, I had to follow Associated Press style, and that typically leaves it out, unless the comma is needed for clarity. So I wrote article after article without it. But then about a year after I stopped freelancing, it went back into my writing. And I’m still using it. Do you use it even in simple lists?

All the time, said Tucker. One hundred percent of the time.

"Do all of you use the Oxford comma?" I asked.

Yes, every second, said Kim, the woman in maroon. The other two women nodded. They formed an intimidating all-girl punctuation posse. A man in a Superman T-shirt silently raised his hand to indicate agreement. That left one holdout—and Tucker, the ringleader, pointed accusingly at him.

It depends on my mood, said Oxford-Ambivalent Guy. I don’t have a rule. If I feel it’s right, I use the Oxford.

The Oxford? He didn’t even bother with the word comma. This was a man who could truly take the Oxford comma or leave the Oxford comma. His friends looked at him aghast.

Are you going to be ostracized after this? I asked, and everyone laughed.

You know, this is the kind of thing I would expect from you, Tucker told him.

I learned that this (mostly) punctuation-passionate crowd had all gone to high school together in Florida. They were now sophomores at different colleges but were reuniting in New York City during their winter holidays for the second year in a row.

We’re trying to make it an annual thing, said Kim.

You must really like each other, I said. Although you—I indicated the holdout—are probably going to be on the outs now because of your erratic Oxford comma use. Oxford-Ambivalent Guy nodded philosophically.

What are you going to do for the rest of your time here? I asked.

We’re about to go catch an opera, said Kim. "At the Met: The Magic Flute."

Wow, I said. You’re a really cultured group. I’m impressed. The opera thing, the Oxford comma thing—

It’s really just him, said Oxford-Ambivalent Guy, pointing to the ringleader. He’s the biggest one about the Oxford comma.

No! said Tucker.

No! said Kim, accompanied by protests from her other friends. I have great passion about this.

You do? asked Oxford-Ambivalent Guy.

"We are all passionate about this!" said Tucker.

Okay, said Oxford-Ambivalent Guy.

You just wouldn’t understand, said Tucker.

* * *

One thing became clear early on in the travels of the Grammar Table: If people took the time to ask me how I felt about the Oxford comma, they were unlikely to be indifferent to it themselves.

I met a man in Utah, however, who was an exception. On an August day that would later reach a hundred degrees, I spoke to him while sweatily stationed across the street from Temple Square, a ten-acre Mormon complex in the middle of downtown Salt Lake City. An ID tag hanging from his shirt identified him as Charles.

Charles told me that the Oxford comma had been a source of friction between him and a friend. My friend didn’t want them, he said.

Yes, people can get very upset about the Oxford comma, I said. Do you use them?

Well, my friend and I were having a knock-down-drag-out fight about this, so I did some research, he said. And I was right: either way is fine. She was not open to the idea that both were acceptable. That fight has served me well, though, because every time I argue with her, every time we come to an impasse, I say to her, ‘Remember the comma!’

I approve of your open-mindedness about the Oxford comma, I said.

Open-minded grammar is my business, he replied.

* * *

In the Bozeman Public Library in Bozeman, Montana, I met a man in a gray hoodie who apparently had not been encountering open-minded grammar.

Hey, how ya doin’? said the man, thirtyish, with sunglasses atop his head.

Welcome to Grammar Table, I said.

What’s up? he asked. I’m a rappa. He leaned over to the Grammar Table microphone (yes, there is one!). I got gramma. I got lyrics, I got ad libs, what you need, what’s goin’ on?

This is the mobile Grammar Table, I said. It originated in New York City. It’s on the road, and the Bozeman Public Library is part of the road.

Nice, said Rapping Man. He was on the road himself, he told me.

What are you doing at the library today? I asked.

Just taking care of some business, said Rapping Man. You know, what you do when you’re on the road. You’re like, I gotta sit in the library so I can use the internet.

It’s a good library, I said. Do you have any grammar comments or questions?

"What’s up with that Oxford