Slowly But Surely, Grammar Rules Evolve

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As every writer knows, language continually evolves to reflect our changing culture. In September, Merriam-Webster added 690 new words to its dictionary. Is it me or does that seem like a lot of new words? They come from slang, emerging industries, and gaming, among other areas, and I wonder how many will be relevant in five years. 

Grammar, on the other hand, is solid and dependable. Sure, we can debate the merits of the Oxford comma all day but the overarching rules remain. And yet, even grammar evolves, albeit much more slowly than language and vocabulary.  

Those who like to police other people’s grammar—and those of us who get paid to—often rely on Merriam-Webster and the Associated Press to stay current. In May, the AP will publish the 57th edition of The Associated Press Stylebook, featuring updates on grammar, spelling, punctuation and language usage. Many news companies outside the Associated Press have adopted the AP Stylebook, and a wide variety of organizations’ communication teams use AP style as a baseline in building their own style guides.

OK with AP 

In recent years, the AP Stylebook has officially sanctioned some surprising changes:

Split infinitives

The debate about whether inserting a word between “to” and an infinitive verb is bad form has been going on at least since 1966. That’s the year Star Trek debuted its opening sequence with the phrase “to boldly go.” Actually, I’m sure the issue has been debated far longer than that, but Star Trek jumped in and took a high-profile side. The change solidified what many grammarians had been advocating for some time.

Equalizing “over” and “more than”

Not long ago, “over” was reserved only for non-numerical and spatial relationships, and “more than” was used for numerical values. For example, “The baseball player signed a contract for more than $20 million.” The AP decided that since the two were commonly used interchangeably, the old rule had become less of a grammar issue and more of a style point. Now, “The baseball player signed a contract for over $20 million” is also correct.

Fewer hyphens

The AP deemed hyphens unnecessary for compound modifiers if the modifier is commonly recognized as one phrase, and if the meaning is clear without the hyphen. Examples include “chocolate chip cookie,” “early morning traffic,” “first quarter touchdown” and “third grade teacher.” As legal content marketing writer, I have to side-eye the amount of room left for interpretation by “commonly recognized” and “clear.” As someone who generally struggles with hyphens, I always double-check the correct usage with the client’s house style guide.

Grammar Myths 

Then there are some established grammar rules that aren’t rules at all—they’re myths that have become widely accepted. Merriam-Webster weighs in on:

Ending a sentence with a preposition

Perhaps the most pervasive grammar myth is that sentences cannot end in a preposition. Turns out it’s not really a rule. The practice of writing to avoid ending a sentence with a preposition apparently dates back to the 17th century, when some writers began applying Latin construction rules to English, according to Merriam-Webster. The practice of not ending sentences with prepositions stuck even though grammar experts have debunked the idea repeatedly. So, ending a sentence with the prepositions “of,” “to” and “with” is perfectly acceptable—just don’t be surprised if some people question it.

“Less” vs. “fewer”

This is a bit like “over” and “more than.” Traditionally, “less” applies to degrees, values or amounts, while “fewer” is used for numbers. “Fewer” modifies plural nouns, although using “less” in this case is increasing. Specifically, “less” is more often used to modify plural nouns when describing distances, amounts of money and in certain commonly used phrases, such as “less than 100 miles” and “in 100 words or less,” according to Merriam-Webster.

Good writing is taken as a matter of course, while bad writing gets noticed. Just take a look at the comments section of any online article—people come out of the woodwork to comment on what they perceive as poor writing. Grammar mistakes can immediately derail an otherwise well-crafted message. Correct grammar is one of the basic elements of effective writing, so keeping up with changing rules and accepted usage is vital.

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