On Sat, 19 Jan 2008 10:05:46 -0500, with neither quill nor qualm, "Ed
Huntress" quickly quoth:

Objective and nominative mixtures make a part of my brain hurt when I see or
hear them. That's how this stuff gets implanted in our heads. Bad grammar
juju should cause mild headaches. If it wasn't for that, I couldn't make a
living as an editor. I would be too slow.

g


I got into a hell of an argument with a highly educated writer and our other
editor (I was Senior Editor on that job but one never pulls rank in that
work) a year ago. It was over comma splices. They raised holy hell with me
because I sometimes splice independent clauses with commas -- a trend in
good writing today, and it was good enough for Shakespeare. They remind me
of you. d8-)

Why do they remind you of me? I splice all over the place, too.


My conclusion is that your point about misuse of "bring" and "take" is not a
bad thing, but examples of real writing show, as Webster's demonstrated,
that the supposed rule simply doesn't apply in many cases. That's typical of
grammar rules in English, and the reason I disparage schoolmarm grammar. To
make it teachable and memorable they make it too rigid. Often, as in this
case, they stretch points to avoid violating the rule and kids learn to
write stilted English for no legitimate reason. I'll guess that your brain
has been trained to spot the uses of bring and take and to run the usage
through your rule filter automatically. Again, that's not a bad thing. But
your rule is too simplistic and you're reaching to make the rule apply. It
doesn't.

That simplistic rule works almost every time.


There is hardly a thing in English for which I think of rules when I'm
editing. As I said, it all has to work automatically or you have no chance.
Clumsy sentences and bad grammatic constructions have to cause some pain,
automatically, when you read them, or you'll never get the job done. You
train by a lifetime of reading good writing to keep that part of your brain
sharp and aware. As it happens, a lot of good writing violates a lot of the
rules. So if you work at editing for a long period, the rules themselves can
cause headaches. You recognize quickly when you encounter one that makes no
sense.

Grok that, but I still disagree, of course.

Ciao!

--
You cannot depend on your eyes when your imagination is out of focus.
-- Mark Twain