Chris (you remember him from the hipster post, right?) gave me a clever way to start this blog post. And I totally forgot it. It was something to the effect of this post is about the survey I did not do for my blog. But it was actually funny when he said it.

So the story is that I’ve been going about administering a survey to various people for a class I’m taking. Quite a few times the people I was surveying asked if the survey was for this blog. The answer to which was no. And I was a little surprised that people were assuming I would do something like that for my blog. In general, I avoid putting that much effort into this thing. Anyway, it occurred to me that I could in fact post the results here. Moreover, it would be conveniently easy. And I like easy blog posts. Especially with finals around the corner.

Here’s the survey if you would like to take it:

1. The practice test will not ____________ your grade.

a) affect                      b) effect

2. Neither the students nor the teacher __________ averse to cheating.

a) were                       b) was

3. ___________ was the house sold to?

a) who                                    b) whom

4. _____________ they elect will be president.

a) whoever                b) whomever

5. If I __________ you, I would go to the game.

a) was                         b) were

6. After work, I like to _______ down and rest on the couch.

a) lie                           b) lay

7. I had just _________ down for a nap when the phone rang.

a) laid                         b) lain

8. She ________ her work out in front of her.

a) lay                          b) laid

9. He seems completely _____________ in going to the show tonight.

a) uninterested         b) disinterested

10. He laughs _____________ a hyena does.

a) like                         b) as

Answers: A, B, B, B, B, A, B, B, A, B

In the survey, I was looking to see if there were any particular areas that people struggled with. I was also looking to see if there was a difference between men and women. The results were about as I expected them. I did expect the women to do better, but realized in advance I would probably not be able to collect adequate amounts of data to prove anything. I thought (based on a statistics class I took in high school) that in order to achieve statistical significance I would have needed to survey many more people. Chris informed me that I would actually needed to have a longer survey with more usage items to prove women did consistently better. However, doing so would have made it much more difficult to find volunteers. And so the results stand where they are. Women did better, but not enough to prove anything.

These are a few of the things I heard quite a bit of as I was administering the survey:

“Lain? That’s a word?”

“But… this sentence is just wrong!” (About sentence #3, which ends with a preposition)

“Well that’s a dumb rule anyway.”

“Man, I thought I was good at grammar.”

“I will never correct anyone again.”

“Disinterested isn’t even a word, right?”

“Lie? But then it sounds like I’m telling a lie.”

“And that’s why I’m not an English major.”

Many people groaned. Many people gave a sort of humorless laugh when they looked at the first question. Many people expressed frustration. A few people argued with me. One person argued with me a lot.

And a lot of people seemed very concerned about how I would judge them. When I tell people that I study the English language, they often say something to the effect of, “Oh, well I guess I have to watch my grammar around you.” I promise though, I’m not into correcting people.

From a linguistic standpoint (and I do consider myself a linguist) there is no such thing as right or wrong. Good grammar vs. bad grammar is a game based on set of arbitrary rules created by some grumpy and overly opinionated dead guys from the 1700’s. True story. Now there is such a thing as conforming to a norm in order to communicate—especially since people do judge you based on your use of the language. That’s where editing and correction come in. Outside of that realm, I think anything that communicates works.

One reason not to be a grammar Nazi is that correcting other people leaves you open to correction. Most of the people who correct others have a limited scope of knowledge concerning grammar. They only know a few of the rules. But you can bet they’ll police the rules they do know to death. How many times have you been scolded for asking can you go to the bathroom as opposed to may you go to the bathroom. That’s a relatively easy rule, so many people know it and many people enforce it. How many times have you been called out for using who or whom incorrectly? Probably not much because only wackos like me actually know that rule.

Second, as I mentioned before the rules are pretty arbitrary. They change. A lot. Contractions used to be a big grammatical no-no. And I don’t just mean in academic writing. You’d never use them if you wanted to be taken seriously. Just like any educated person today avoids ain’t.

I think that maybe this post isn’t as interesting as I’d hoped it would be… oh well. I can’t be entertaining all the time. So I’ll sum up real quick. Constantly correcting others people’s grammar doesn’t do much besides make enemies. And almost always it will come back to bite you in the behind. Personally, I know that when I am corrected I watch the person who corrected me like a hawk, just waiting for them to make a mistake. And when they do make a mistake (and they always do eventually) I am at their throat with the full force of all 1232 pages of Merriam Webster’s Dictionary of English Usage. Obsessive? Maybe. But I really don’t like being corrected. And now end this less-interesting-than-desired post here with a fun picture I found and a few more results from my survey.

Question #	Item tested	Overall %	Proficiency
1	Affect/effect	71.6	High
2	Subject/ verb agreement in correlative constructions	21.1	Low
3	Who/whom	57.9	Moderate
4	Who/whom	63.2	Moderate
5	Subjunctive	84.2	High
6	Lay/lie present tense	58.9	Moderate
7	Lay/lie participle	40	Low
8	Lay/lie past tense	73.7	High
9	Disinterested/ uninterested	74.7	High
10	Like/as	24.2	Low

Question#	Correct answers: Women	Incorrect answers: Women	Percent correct: Women	Correct answers: Men	Incorrect answers: Men	Percent correct: Men	Difference
1.00	39.00	12.00	0.765	29.000	15.000	0.659	0.11
2.00	11.00	40.00	0.216	9.000	35.000	0.205	0.01
3.00	31.00	20.00	0.608	24.000	20.000	0.545	0.06
4.00	36.00	15.00	0.706	24.000	20.000	0.545	0.16
5.00	46.00	5.00	0.902	34.000	10.000	0.773	0.13
6.00	33.00	19.00	0.635	23.000	21.000	0.523	0.11
7.00	22.00	29.00	0.431	16.000	28.000	0.364	0.07
8.00	35.00	16.00	0.686	35.000	9.000	0.795	-0.11
9.00	39.00	11.00	0.780	32.000	12.000	0.727	0.05
10.00	9.00	42.00	0.176	14.000	30.000	0.318	-0.14
						AVG	0.05
						STDEV	0.10

Ok, I guess sometimes corrections can be funny.