Writing

Back When Everyone Read His Grammar Book

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Where are you in the grammar debate/squabble over singular third person pronouns? When anybody is opening a door, should we write that anybody is opening his door, his or her door, or their door? I’ll state upfront that using his or her is just a waste of words and speedbump in your sentence. The issue is really whether we should use the singular his or the plural their, becoming comfortable with their being used for one person.

Until today, I thought his was the singular, gender neutral pronoun, and unless you’re talking about girls (like I am when I talk about the little people in my home), then you should say things like everyone should use his napkin, not his shirt. This afternoon, I read in an NYT article that they has been used for individuals for centuries, and a grammarian named Anne Fisher changed it.

Fisher’s popular guide, “A New Grammar” (1745), ran to more than 30 editions, making it one of the most successful grammars of its time. More important, it’s believed to be the first to say that the pronoun he should apply to both sexes. . . . Meanwhile, many great writers — Byron, Austen, Thackeray, Eliot, Dickens, Trollope and more — continued to use they and company as singulars, never mind the grammarians.

Well, if Austen, Thackeray, Eliot, et al used it, I’m not going to complain ever again.

Fiction, Reading, Writing

How is Reading for ‘Escape’ a Bad Thing?

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Suitcase near antique wooden doorway on beach Travis Prinzi writes about fantasy in literature, leaning on Tolkien’s Fairy Stories essay. He asks why do many readers assume authors are just writing for the fun of it, not crafting an artwork to one degree or another.

The real “gnosticism” in this discussion is not the artist who builds a story on an imaginative key, but one who thinks that books provide some “escape” from the “real world,” and that this escape is a good thing. Tolkien wrote,

Why should a man be scorned, if, finding himself in a prison, he tries to get out and go home? Or if, when he cannot do so, he thinks and talks about other topics than jailers and prison-walls?

For Tolkien, the pejorative use of “escapism” was married to the false belief that current trends define Real Life – the electric street lamp, for example, is nowhere near as permanent as Lightning. But most of us know more about the lamp, because it’s more relevant to our daily existence. The fairy-tale takes us to the lightning, the “more permanent thing.”

More permanent things–that’s what I want to write about.

Publishing, Writing

Are there ghost-writers in the sky?

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Alisa Harris, at the World Magazine blog, writes about the ethical question of pastors cribbing sermon outlines—sometimes whole homilies—from online sermon caches.

As an aside, she links to an article from bnet, about the use of ghostwriters in Christian publishing.

Such things are common in the industry. When my first novel, Erling’s Word (fair warning—you don’t need to buy that book if you have The Year of the Warrior. TYOTW incorporates it entirely in a double volume) was published by Baen, it came out the same month as the “first novel” by an actor who’d worked in a very famous science fiction TV series. Everybody knew, I think, that this actor hadn’t really written the book. Probably hadn’t even contributed much. A fledgeling author was listed as co-author, but it was understood that she’d done the real work, while the actor had contributed the considerable market value of his name. Continue reading Are there ghost-writers in the sky? →

Coffee, Tea, Drinks

Jars of Clay on Love for Coffee

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Charlie Lowell of the band Jars of Clay talks about coffee (shout out to Crema in Nashville) and a little about the band’s mission work, Blood:Water.

Q: You guys do a lot of work in Africa with Blood:Water. Do you ever think about how some of the coffees you drink, obviously the ones from Africa, are impacted by the work you do getting clean water wells and HIV medication to a lot of those villages that include coffee farmers?

CL: Yes, that’s quite a connection. We watched the documentary “Black Gold” a couple years ago on our bus, and it was crazy how things trickle down- little decisions we make day in and out do affect others around the globe. It is simply amazing to see how village/community life changes with the addition of a clean-water well. Kids are in school instead of fetching dirty water, women can work on micro-finance, and general health is improved greatly.

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Twitter on Words

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The Editor at Large for Merriam-Webster, Peter Sokolowski, is tweeting on word searches. He notes there have been many requests for the definition of “stupidly,” due to President Obama’s press conference last week. Do the citizens of the Interweb not know what “stupidly” means? Looking up “nefarious” I can understand and “avuncular” got a boost from talk on W. Cronkite, but “stupidly”?

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Who Is Stereotyping Here?

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Are you up to speed on the flap over Professor Henry Louis Gates’ arrest for disorderly behavior and complaints of racism: I don’t blame you if you aren’t, but I found this bit of the story too fascinating to pass up. The WSJ observes:

Gates, however, has managed to get tripped up by his own prejudices. Another Gates quote we noted yesterday was this: “If [Crowley] apologizes sincerely, I am willing to forgive him. And if he admits his error, I am willing to educate him about the history of racism in America and the issue of racial profiling. . . . That’s what I do for a living.”

As it turns out, that’s what Crowley does for a living. The Boston Herald explains: Crowley . . . has taught a racial profiling class at the Lowell Police Academy for five years. His academy class, which he teaches with a black police officer, instructs about 60 police cadets per year . . .

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Far-flung phenomena on a Friday

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Thanks for the nice–nay, flattering–review, Phil. It was so encouraging that I celebrated by making myself a turkey sandwich with two (2) slices of turkey on it for supper.

In the house where I grew up, that qualified as extravagance.



S. T. Karnick, over at his The American Culture blog, reviews the movie “Public Enemies,” and finds it wanting. I think I’ll give that one a pass. (And I don’t care what anybody says. There’s no resemblance whatever between Johnny Depp and John Dillinger.)



Dr. Gene Edward Veith, at Cranach, links to a post by Matthew Kratz at Sola Fide, in which he shares some information from Mark Noll’s book, The New Shape of World Christianity. Dr. Veith himself notes:

In my own tradition, there are lots more Lutherans in Africa (12 million) than there are in America (9 million). The Lutheran church in Madagascar (3.5 million) is bigger than the Lutheran Church Missouri Synod (2.5 million).

Madagascar was a chief traditional field of Norwegian Lutherans. Not only Norwegians from the homeland, but young Norwegian-American pioneer churches, spent years and tears and blood in that country. I know several people who grew up in missionary homes there.

Book Reviews, Creative Culture