You throw tomatoes; I throw tow-mah-toes.

Ann Althouse quibbles with Brooks' phrasing choices in the column criticized below. Eh. Not one who appreciates misspellings, or confusing syntax myself, I do say "free the writers" in choosing their phrases.

For example, here's her beef:

Tuesday, December 15, 2009
Which is the more embarrassing bungling of verb forms?

1. "If you were graduating from Princeton in the first part of the 20th century, you probably heard the university president, John Hibben, deliver one of his commencement addresses."

2. "I really wonder how the stimulus would have went had Lieberman been kicked."
Labels: grammar

posted by Ann Althouse at 11:26 AM

One might defend the chose of past present, rather than straight past ("were graduating" over "graduated") for a style reason: that first one plunks you down on the uncomfortable folding chairs in an overheated auditorium listening to a commencement speaker rattle on, on your "big day". Put me right there.

Feeds into the next paragraph too, "You might not have been paying attention during the speech, but as you got older a similar moral framework was floating around the culture, and it probably got lodged in your mind."

Again, you're sitting there "graduating", packed in with fellow classmates, thinking ahead to after the ceremony and catching the gist of the speaker's message*, but not really comprehending it fully until you've got a few years of reality or practical experience knocking around under your belt...

In short, unless it's an obvious gross grammatical "error", the tie goes to the writer in my book on questions of style, especially as our New Media redefines standards and more competition means the writing loosens up a bit. Like the casual dress code carryover from IT industries to corporate offices.

Another thing, if you want to play by the grammar rules of the past... What's inconsistent about the verb tenses in the last two sentences here?

I think #1 is more embarrassing because:

1. It's the first sentence in a column in the NYT. (And #2 is a blog post.)

2. Brooks has a copy editor to help him. (I don't know if Coates had editing help. I'm guessing he doesn't.)

Judging tight, it's either had/didn't or has/doesn't. But loosen up those eyeballs, readers. Give the writer some room to deliberately choose their words, even if it means minor inconsistency.

You might not like to be sitting on those seats, just starting out and forced to spend the time listening to someone more distinguished talk on, but if that's where he wants to put us, it's his work and now he's got us there.

But really, is it style points we all should be analyzing -- like concentrating on the speaker's choice of tie color that day, or how his hair is coiffed?

Or should you be listening more to the meat of the argument, so to speak, storing that away in your brain somewhere, so that later when it matters, you're able concentrate and criticize on the substance of things -- considering whether or not the argument was a good one you heard that day, and then comparing that to reality in hindsight.

I wonder if she even read past those opening lines...


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* Aside: My undergrad graduation speaker was Dr. C. Everett Koop. I remember his forward-looking message that day, as well as his unique appearance.