A Word Please

June Casagrande As someone with a reporting background, I have a standard, seasoned response to any fact I hear. It is to ask, "Says who?"

Before my journalism training, I would believe any bit of unfounded gossip that came my way -- everything from "Don't flash your headlights at other cars because gang members will get you" to "Ryan Seacrest is just metrosexual." But after years in community news spent digging courageously for the naked truth about potholes and school plays, I've earned the title of bona fide tough customer.

The waiter says, "The special is delicious tonight," and I want names, darn it! True, I don't get them. But at least I get to feel that all those years of building a career in the sky's-the-limit newspaper business weren't totally for naught.

But there's one area in which the impulse to ask "Says who?" is still useful: grammar.

Many people take as gospel just about any grammar "rule" they hear. Surely, some people assume, somewhere out there exists some big book of grammar rights and wrongs set in stone by some wise person dubbed the boss of the language. But that's not so.

Grammar is really just a description of how people use the language. Yes, there are rights and wrongs. But these aren't based on20dictates. They're based on questions of whether any given usage violates our established standards. I divide these standards into three categories: grammaticality, idiom, and dictionary definition.

Grammaticality just means that words are grouped in a ways that follow our standard methods (syntax). "You write" is grammatical. "You writes" is not.

Idioms are word groupings so common that they're dubbed correct. Sometimes they're expressions that originally would have been considered ungrammatical or nonsensical: "I'm going to 'high tail' it out of here." Other times, they address issues such as which preposition to use with any given word: "disinterested in" as opposed to "disinterested to."

Dictionary definition is pretty straightforward. If a majority of respected dictionaries document a usage, it is thus sanctioned.

Yes, there's some in-fighting. For example, dictionaries have different standards. But the biggest rift is between the groups called "descriptivists" and "prescriptivists." Descriptivists are associated with a "Any way that people speak is automatically right " approach. Prescriptivists are associated with a "Rules are rules and no amount of abusing them changes that" philosophy.

But the gulf between these groups is smaller than you might think. They both base their concepts of "right" and "wrong" on common usage. The prescriptivists just pick a farther-back point in time on which to base their rulings. I've never met a prescriptivist who insists that we should all still say "thou" and "thine." I've never met a descriptivist who says that, if just one person says, "You writes," it is thus grammatical.

Personally, I don't see that there's much to fight about. It's like a couple who fight over when it's time to fill the tank. The husband say to fill up when it's down to a third of a tank. The wife waits till it's down to a quarter. They can fight all they want, but as long as they stick to their guidelines, they're not going to run out of gas.

It's a valid question - "Where should we draw the line?" - but I let others duke it out. For now, I feel pretty safe here in the passenger seat.

A lot of people I talk to think grammar is beyond their grasp, hopelessly mysterious, brutally pedantic. None of these things is true. And, from what I've seen, the best place for a grammarphobe to start is by asking: "Who writes all these crazy rules, anyway?" Because the answer is, "You do."

June Casagrande is author of "Mortal Syntax: 101 Language Choices That Will Get You Clobbered=2 0by the Grammar Snobs - - Even If You're Right." She can be reached at JuneTCN@aol.com.