Wednesday, 04 March 2009

• Currently The Chicago Manual of Style see related

  The Patron Saints of National Grammar Day

  
  According to the Society for the Promotion of Good Grammar, which should know, March 4 has been designated National Grammar Day. Since I currently wield a red pen for a living, I for one find this very gratifying. Thank you, thank you.

  
  

  
  

  
  But how exactly are we supposed to celebrate this momentous occasion? The National Grammar Day website itself offers few practical tips beyond “Speak well! Write well! And on March 4, march forth and spread the word.” Sound advice all around, but I prefer my celebrations to be a bit more tangible. Something involving a shower of confetti, or a huge cake, or a neighborhood barbecue, or presents... or present perfects? Or maybe 40 days of fasting from unnecessary adjectives and a vow to renounce all sentences that begin “Another reason why is because...”
  

  I ’ve got it! Let’s get everyone together for a singalong of the indelible songs from Strong Bad’s Rhythm ‘n’ Grammar:

  “Y-O-U-R,” “Y-O-U-apostrophe-R-E,”
  They’re as different as night and day.
  Don’t you think that night and day are different?
  What’s wrong with you?

  Or my favorite:

  Ohhhhh, if you want it to be possessive, it’s just “I-T-S”
  But if it’s supposed to be a contraction, then it’s “I-T-apostrophe-S,”
  Scalawag.

  Yeah, that works. Go find the complete songs and lyrics here, and sing them to all your friends. All of them. They’ll love it.
  
  Now the only thing we need to make the holiday perfect is to find a religious angle to it, since for some reason religious holidays tend to catch on better than plain ol’ secular ones.  (If you don’t believe this, just compare the number of people who celebrate the 25^th of December to the number of people who celebrate the Ides of March.)
  
  Like most things, it gets a bit trickier once theology is involved. Most of the theology books I’ve read make little mention of grammar, preferring to focus on things like Soteriology and Pneumatology and Hamartiology and Hagiology and so forth.
  
  The last one may actually give us a clue. Hagiology is the study of saints, and the Catholic Church has a patron saint for just about everything. I’m not Catholic, but this does sound promising. Surely there’s a patron saint of good grammar whose memory we can invoke on this day?
  
  Well, not exactly. The closest I could find is the patron saint of editors, who is St. John Bosco. You remember him, of course? Me neither. But apparently he was the first saint in history ever to be interviewed for a newspaper. How exactly this qualifies him to watch over those of us at the copy desk, I’m not entirely sure, but like I said, I’m not Catholic.
  
  Still, there has to be a saint who’s had more of an influence on the world of grammar or writing or editing or something. I researched some more. St. Isidore of Seville is credited with writing the world’s first encyclopedia, but he’s already taken as the patron saint of the Internet, which presumably gives him more than enough to stay busy with these days. I further discovered that the Archangel Gabriel is the patron of publishers, which makes sense considering how often he showed up bringing important news.
  
  But when it comes to the actual work of editing, proofreading, and correcting grammar, three strong contenders for the title of patron emerge:

  
  1. St. Jerome
  
  Widely regarded as the first great Bible scholar, Jerome produced an impressive list of scholarly writings and translations including commentaries, church histories, lexicons, and the monumental Vulgate Latin translation of the Bible from the original languages. His preface to a Hebrew lexicon shows his wholehearted acceptance of the attitude that marks all true editors:

  “I, therefore, went through all the books of Scripture in order, and in the restoration which I have now made of the ancient fabric, I think that I have produced a work which may be found valuable by Greeks as well as Latins.... I say this, not with a view of arrogantly puffing up my own work, but because I know how much labour I have spent on it, and wish to provoke those whose knowledge is deficient to read it.”

  (source)

  
  

  
  

  2. St. Silvanus
  
  Silvanus (aka Silas) may be best known for his missionary journeys with the Apostle Paul, but this traveling evangelist was also known to work as an amanuensis. And what’s that, you ask? One recent scholar described this noble work as follows:

  
  “The author could permit the secretary to make minor changes in the form or content of the letter when preparing the final text from the rough dictation copy or from a preliminary draft prepared by the author himself.... The implication is that it was part of [his] function to correct slips made by [the author] and to ensure the accuracy of the finished work. In a word, he acted as a modern copy editor, who points out errors and asks if a particular formulation really conveys precisely what the author wanted to say.”

  
  —Paul the Letter-Writer, Jerome Murphy-O’Connor, The Liturgical Press: 1995.

   

  
  

  
  

  
  

  3. St. Columba of Iona
  
  First of all, he’s from Ireland, so he’s cool by definition. But among the many miracles attributed to this Celtic Saint is... wait for it... a divinely-aided supernatural work of copy-editing:

  “One day Baithene came to the saint and said, ‘I want some one of the brethren to look over with me and correct the psalter which I have written.’ Hearing this, the saint said, ‘Why give us this trouble without any cause? In that psalter of thine, of which thou speakest, there is not one superfluous letter to be found, nor is any wanting except the one vowel I.’ And accordingly, when the whole psalter was read over, what the saint had said was found to be true.”

   

  —Adamnan’s Life of St. Columba, Chapter XVII, “Of the Vowel I” (source)

   

  
  

  
  So, what do you think? Which of these men of God shall we authors / bloggers / editors / grammar freaks adopt as our patron? Or do you have other ideas for observing National Grammar Day?
  

  
  

  _________________________
  

  Just for Word Nerds: A few of my favorite grammar / editing blogs

  After Deadline (NY Times Style-blog.)

  You Don’t Say (by John McIntyre of the Baltimore Sun. Including the occasional serial story of grammar noir.)

  Evil Editor (Your queries mocked while you wait. Also, weird cartoons.)

  The Society for the Promotion of Good Grammar (Home of Things That Make Us [Sic])

  
  

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