University grammar class

Atlantis said:

It's called Introduction to Editing. (snip)

I can't help thinking all of this is a little...pointless? Do you really need to know how many different types of verbs and nouns etc there are in the universe to be able to write well?

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No, someone doesn't need to know this to be able to write well.

However, the class isn't a class about writing; it's a class about editing.

And this is stuff someone needs to know to be able to edit well.

Editors get paid for knowing how to edit, not for knowing how to write. You might consider how few editors are also writers; the skillsets are substantially different, with only a certain amount of overlap.

Atlantis said:

I'm taking a class on grammar at the moment in university and it is completely overwhelming. It's called Introduction to Editing and I was excited to be doing a class focused on actual publishing. I thought I would be able to get through the class easily due to experience I have with doing some editing, but the level of work in this class is insane.

The work load is completely overwhelming. It starts off simple enough: noun, pronoun, common noun. Then it gets into adjective clauses, noun clauses, possessive nouns, reflective nouns, demonstrative nouns, transitive verbs, intransitive verbs, modal verbs, gerunds, verbals, etc...

Repeat until insane.

I can't help thinking all of this is a little...pointless? Do you really need to know how many different types of verbs and nouns etc there are in the universe to be able to write well?

When I look at a sentence my brain goes into automatic writer mode and can pick the places that need commas, full stops, apostrophes, a tense change, etc.

When I change a verb or a noun I don't actually know what type of verb or noun I am selecting. All I know is which one will make the sentence sound correct to me.

Has anyone else ever taken a class like this? Did you find it worth while? I thought it would help me with my writing, but there is so much stuff to remember I don't think a lot of it is sinking in real well.

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It's a class in editing, not writing.

Atlantis said:

The work load is completely overwhelming. It starts off simple enough: noun, pronoun, common noun. Then it gets into adjective clauses, noun clauses, possessive nouns, reflective nouns, demonstrative nouns, transitive verbs, intransitive verbs, modal verbs, gerunds, verbals, etc...

Repeat until insane.

I can't help thinking all of this is a little...pointless? Do you really need to know how many different types of verbs and nouns etc there are in the universe to be able to write well?

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a) As others have said, it's a class on editing, not writing.

b) I learned all of those things in high middle school. Granted, I went to private school, and it seems many schools aren't as thorough with grammar anymore, but all of that is very basic grammar. Certainly far less than you were trying to learn if you were trying to learn English as a second language.

Have you done any sentence diagramming?

kuwisdelu said:

a) As others have said, it's a class on editing, not writing.

b) I learned all of those things in high middle school. Granted, I went to private school, and it seems many schools aren't as thorough with grammar anymore, but all of that is very basic grammar. Certainly far less than you were trying to learn if you were trying to learn English as a second language.

Have you done any sentence diagramming?

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I've known so many people, some who went to very good schools, both private and public, who were never taught grammar. Some only learned grammar rules when studying romance languages. Some schools/teachers do offer comprehensive grammar lessons, but in my (obviously limited) experience, it's catholic schools that seem to keep grammar lessons standard.

As Tina Fey once noted, basically, nuns don't play ("...bitches get stuff done. That’s why Catholic schools use nuns as teachers and not priests. Those nuns are mean old clams and they sleep on cots and they’re allowed to hit you. And at the end of the school year you hated those bitches but you knew the capital of Vermont [and what a predicate is]." -Fey). I don't think I've ever run into a Catholic school grad who hadn't diagrammed sentences.

Atlantis said:

I'm taking a class on grammar at the moment in university and it is completely overwhelming. It's called Introduction to Editing and I was excited to be doing a class focused on actual publishing. I thought I would be able to get through the class easily due to experience I have with doing some editing, but the level of work in this class is insane.

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Yeah...the grammar class at the first university I went too was hell. No one was expected to pass it the first time. You pretty much had to write a grammar book then spend the makeup class editing that. It was a nightmare. I went to some experimental early schools and they tended to skip technical grammar. So when the class got to sentence diagramming I was completely lost having never seen it before.

In the end it was interesting to learn how grammar rules were applied to language after hundreds of years of speaking it but otherwise, complete torture.

cornflake said:

I've known so many people, some who went to very good schools, both private and public, who were never taught grammar. Some only learned grammar rules when studying romance languages. Some schools/teachers do offer comprehensive grammar lessons, but in my (obviously limited) experience, it's catholic schools that seem to keep grammar lessons standard.

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It's a shame there aren't more (non-religious) schools that hold these things as important. I went to a non-religious private school.

As Tina Fey once noted, basically, nuns don't play ("...bitches get stuff done. That’s why Catholic schools use nuns as teachers and not priests. Those nuns are mean old clams and they sleep on cots and they’re allowed to hit you. And at the end of the school year you hated those bitches but you knew the capital of Vermont [and what a predicate is]." -Fey). I don't think I've ever run into a Catholic school grad who hadn't diagrammed sentences.

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And I remember taking tests on state capitols, but hell if I can remember even half of them.

Of course, I remember taking tests on the periodic table and a few hundred common ions and how they bond back in sixth grade, too...

But I definitely know my grammar.

As an editor, you not only need to be able to understand what your authors are doing -- you also need to be able to discuss it. You need to be able to pick out patterns, describe habits, and diagnose problems. To do that, you need vocabulary and taxonomy.

It's like a medical student saying, "I understand hand structure; why do I need to know the metacarpals from the phalanges?"

I know it's tough at first. It all seems like grammatical soup. I hit much the same difficulty when I studied Classics, and found myself having to come to grips with how gerundives aren't gerunds and what exactly the aorist is.

It does get better, and then you'll find that the things you only knew on instinct become clear, discussable, and defensible against (for instance) authors whose ear for language isn't as good as yours.

At my first year at university I took a class in Linguistics, now there is a class that could make you cry.

I think what you've come to realise is that because of a publishing background, you've went into the class thinking you would cruise through it. I did the same with my Lit degree: "I've had a few poems published, therefore I see no reason that I won't receive a first.'

Lordy, does this mean I need to learn all this stuff just to talk with my editor?

Doomed. Totally doomed...

The things you list are all pretty basic grammar, and you should have been taught this type of grammar in seventh or eighth grade, and certainly long before you're out of high school. I still have a couple of jr. high English books, and they contain all of this, and more. It is overwhelming if you try to learn it at college level because you lack the background.

I don't know why middle schools don't emphasize this more. I suppose they trust colleges to do it, but it's a lot tougher to learn if you wait until you reach this level.

The bad news is that as an editor, or as a writer, yes, you do need to know this and more. You can't be a top level editor or writer without learning it, at least to some degree. The good ness is that you can forget about half of it later on. Until you learn it all, however, you have no idea what you need to remember, or what you can safely forget.

Believe it or not, it gets much easier as you go along.

kuwisdelu said:

b) I learned all of those things in high middle school. Granted, I went to private school,

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I went to a public school and had an excellent, excellent grammar (and style) class, complete with diagramming sentences. I LOVED it. Of course, I don't think this is common to all public schools; I think my particular English teacher chose to teach it.

I also took Latin (by choice), which I think further improved my English grammar, because you have to know what part of speech each word is in Latin in order to decline it properly in the sentence.

I love getting my teeth into grammar; I find it fun. Granted, I think the reason I enjoy it so much is probably the mathematician side of my brain rather than the writer side! And it isn't for everyone. But I do feel it gives me a far deeper understanding of language and what I can do with it -- it feels, emotionally, like how taking art history gave me a greater appreciation for art. And yes, I think having this understanding has bettered my writing.

Atlantis said:

Do you really need to know how many different types of verbs and nouns etc there are in the universe to be able to write well?

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No, certainly not, as others have stated.

But I think my grammatical understanding (not the memorization of terms, of course, but the understanding, which you can't start studying until you have the terms to talk about it) has improved my writing. YMMV, of course.

So, to answer your question, yes, I think the grammar nitty-gritty has been extremely valuable for me to know as a writer -- but again, I enjoy grammar immensely, and it may not be worth it to you to study something that makes you miserable.

Oh, and like evilrooster said, knowing the terms is vital for discussion. My grammatical knowledge tells me why a sentence pings me as wrong in SYW, for instance, and then I can tell the writer, "This sounds wrong because your parallel structure's off; it should be this instead . . ."

Atlantis said:

It focuses on both things equally. But yes, it is a class mostly on editing.

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I'm a bit confused. How can it focus on both things equally, yet be mostly about editing?

Per your original question: my junior year in high school English class was dedicated to grammar. We did a lot of sentence diagramming. I've forgotten most of the grammatical terms, but I think having done those exercises taught me to be more aware of what works in a sentence and what doesn't.

If you don't want to be an editor, and you believe that you already understand how to write with proper grammar, perhaps the class is not in your best interest.

shadowwalker said:

Lordy, does this mean I need to learn all this stuff just to talk with my editor?

Doomed. Totally doomed...

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I doubt it. But your editor is going to deal with people who think in those terms as well as people who don't. Not just authors, either: copy editors, proof readers, other editors, etc. may have very different conversations than you do.

kuwisdelu said:

And I remember taking tests on state capitols, but hell if I can remember even half of them.

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Actually, it's capitals, unless you're talking about the building.

And here they are:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_capitals_in_the_United_States

caw

You can learn everything you need to know to write well (and by that I mean at a level where being published as-is would not embarrass) without ever diagramming a sentence.

The main boost learning the mechanics of grammar gives to people who edit is, as noted by more than one person here, the common rules and nomenclature it provides. It's easier to explain what someone else does wrong when there's an agreed-on name for that particular thing.

And then there's transformational grammar. >.<

Have you gotten to transformational grammar yet?

That was my favorite part of the university-level grammar course I took. But then, hey, I've always been a geek.



As for the original question: No, you don't need to know every obscure grammatical term and concept, but you do need to know when you're screwing up.

Atlantis said:

I can't help thinking all of this is a little...pointless? Do you really need to know how many different types of verbs and nouns etc there are in the universe to be able to write well?

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No, but you do need to know them in order to edit.

You need to know why something needs to be changed—or could be changed to be more effective—and what the possible changes are.

And if you're an editor, you need to be able to explain why and how and what the options are to writers, so they can decide what's best for their book.

shadowwalker said:

Lordy, does this mean I need to learn all this stuff just to talk with my editor?

Doomed. Totally doomed...

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No; it's the editor's job to explain it to the writer, and to suggest alternatives.

All I'll add is I feel your pain. In first year university, I had a course aimed at making science students competent at writing essays. The prof used to give us these quizzes on grammar.

Half the quiz was "Identify the [argle-blargle-grammatical-thingy] in this sentence."

The other half was "Fix this sentence."

Thank goodness for the second half. My intuitive understanding of when a sentence "sounds" right was all that allowed me to scrape a bare pass on those damn' quizzes.

blacbird said:

Actually, it's capitals, unless you're talking about the building.

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CapitOl for the building, which has a dOme which is rather like an O.

blacbird said:

Actually, it's capitals, unless you're talking about the building.

And here they are:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_capitals_in_the_United_States

caw

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Dammit, I even looked it up. The dictionary needs a note under the definition "seat of power" that says "but only if that seat is a building." English spelling is stupid.

ETA: In my defense, it was 4am and I'd had half a bottle of scotch.

I have to respectfully and loudly disagree with people who claim such knowledge is required to be an editor. Perhaps that's the case in book editing, sure. However, I spent six years as a newspaper copy editor and news editor, and I'm not sure I can tell you what an adverb is with any degree of confidence. Nor do I care. Such things were definitely not topics of conversation among the editors.

Yes, I've studied this stuff - 8th grade, 11th grade and as a college junior. It was far too boring and technical to be of either interest or utility. My bottom line has always been: If it looks good, sounds good and feels good, then it's good.

Some editors may indeed talk about intransitive verbs and gerunds daily, but not all. I'd just caution you not to paint everyone in the field with the same brush.

JournoWriter said:

I have to respectfully and loudly disagree with people who claim such knowledge is required to be an editor. Perhaps that's the case in book editing, sure. However, I spent six years as a newspaper copy editor and news editor, and I'm not sure I can tell you what an adverb is with any degree of confidence. Nor do I care. Such things were definitely not topics of conversation among the editors.

Yes, I've studied this stuff - 8th grade, 11th grade and as a college junior. It was far too boring and technical to be of either interest or utility. My bottom line has always been: If it looks good, sounds good and feels good, then it's good.

Some editors may indeed talk about intransitive verbs and gerunds daily, but not all. I'd just caution you not to paint everyone in the field with the same brush.

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I think this too may vary. I know a copyeditor for a paper and his department (and other papers' departments I know of in the same city) gives aspiring copyeditors detailed tests (that mostly require editing sentences or not, but the prospective employees can then be asked to explain why they did x, y, and z).

They're also often engaged in arguments at work over grammatical minutiae. Someone will change something to agree and the writer or boss will argue that it agrees the other way because it's actually referring to the intransitive object or what have you. I'm sure mostly it just goes through but I know he's a festival of grammar knowledge and has to be.