What’s a Teacher to Do?

A common mistake made by my students is using “everyday” instead of “every day.” One (everyday) is an adjective, as in “That is an everyday concern of mine.”  The other is a noun modified by an adjective, as in “Every day I brush my teeth.”

I thought my analysis was undeniably correct until I landed on the website www.grammar.net and found the following sentence:  “Although ending a sentence with a preposition is considered incorrect, these constructions are used everyday.”  This is a GRAMMAR website, and they used “everyday” incorrectly. How can I object when my students make the same mistake? I can, but it is an uphill fight.

Just one example? Oh no.  What about the use of apostrophes to make plurals? In the popular textbook A Writer’s Reference, by Diana Hacker and Nancy Sommers, the section on apostrophes states, “Do not use an apostrophe to pluralize an abbreviation.”  According to this textbook, used in college classrooms across the country, G.M.O., an abbreviation, should be written G.M.O.s. But a recent New York Times (9/16/2012) article by Mark Bittman is entitled G.M.O.’s:  Let’s Label ‘Em, defying the rules in my textbook.

Back to Grammar.net, a graphically enhanced website which comes up near the top of list on an Internet search for “grammar.” The blogpost on that site with the “everyday” error was written by “Victoria,” a mysterious creature about whom no information was available other than her purported name (is it really a “she?” or could this be Victor or Viktor in female guise?). It would (being at the top of the Internet search) be a place my students might land, and could they not raise this usage as an objection to my correction of their “everydays?” No. It does not meet the criteria for academic sourcing which I enforce in my class.  In order to use a website as a source, it must be from a trusted organization, not creatures like “Victoria,” and should have an academic sponsor or some expert backing. Digging a little deeper into the “About Us” section reveals that the website is linked to “SpellChecker.net” which sells two products named SCAYT and WSC. This is, in other words, a commercial organization, and not a reliable source.

So what’s a teacher to do? Neither the solid The New York Times nor the shaky grammar.net support her. She is beginning to doubt the reliability of popular textbooks such as A Writer’s Reference, and has long ago despaired of using The Elements of Style because “style” has changed over the years. Article one, page one, on the possessive apostrophe, declares that we should write “Burns’s poems” and “Charles’s friend,” but it wouldn’t take long to find a New York Times or New Yorker article which blew that one out of the water. The universal book at Montclair State this year was The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks. Flyers about appearance of  Lacks’s (according to The Elements of Style) son announced that  “Lacks’ son” would appear at  a symposium there.

I don’t despair. I come back to a point I have made many times before – our language is changing quickly, unreliably, unpredictably, constantly. There. I broke first rule of Stephen King, stated over and over again in his masterful book On Writing, “Avoid adverbs!”


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