Correct Grammar (was Open Email to Yahoo Feedback/Try Yahoo Investor Relations

[Geoff Bannister]

--- In HPFGU-OTChatter at yahoogroups.com, "Kathryn" <kcawte at n...> wrote:
>  
> K
>  
> > And as for JKR's usage I believe (but feel free to prove me 
wrong) that
> she
> > uses it in speech and it's generally accepted that making all your
> > characters speak perfectly grammatical English isn't very 
realistic

Geoff:
I've only just read this thread, having been alerted by one of the 
other group members.

I don't think that we're specifically discussing whether we speak 
perfectly grammatical English, but looking at one particular aspect 
of it.

Looking at it from my own point of view, I suppose I have to admit 
that I am probably among the more senior member of the Harry Potter 
groups so I might be forgiven for being an annoying old pedant.

When I was at grammar school, English was taught much more rigorously 
than it is today. As part of my GCE course in English Language (the 
then Fifth Year national examination), I had to learn to do clause 
analysis; this mean "stripping down" a sentence and indicating which 
job a word was performing. Also learning Latin - with its 6 cases to 
correct what a previous poster wrote - gave us a great insight into 
the structure of languages.

As a teacher for 30 years, although my subjects were mainly Maths, 
and later Computing, while we were at college, we had it firmly put 
into our minds that we should remember the Hadow Report (of something 
ancient like 1928?) which had the credo "Every teacher should be a 
teacher of English" enshrined in it.

Coming to the "I" and "me" situation, I would agree with other 
contributors who have said that, if you are in doubt over an "I 
and.." or "me and..." usage, drop out the other person and see what 
it looks like then. The wrongness of the "me and John are going 
there" statement is then quite obvious. I have no objection to the 
personal pronoun being first as long as it's the right case! 

Interestingly, when I was in the last year or so of my grammar 
school, the Head of English in our school wrote a series of English 
grammar textbooks and got into an argument with the publisher over 
using "It is I" versus "It's me". So an experiment was set up and 
members of the publishing staff were asked to come and knock on the 
chief editor's door; when asked "Who's there?" they had to reply 
without using their name. 100% said "It's me". My teacher conceded 
the point!

There is also the question of in what situation we are using the 
language. I claim to be tri-lingual: formal written English, informal 
spoken English used professionally (if you see what I mean) and the 
casual conversation I might have at the church youth group - although 
I attempt to retain a modicum of good grammar there!

Apart from the "I/me" problem, the only other items which annoy me 
are the use of adjectives where adverbs should be used ("Run down to 
the shop quick and get me some eggs") and (ducks apprehensively) the 
use of American spellings in UK situations.