Rules and Exceptions

Still, the dynamic and open nature of English causes problems for any of us who try to write in it. Not having an “official” set of rules means that it’s often hard to understand how the language should work. There are plenty of places you can go for advice-- the trick is trying to get these sources to agree. You can consult dictionaries, grammar books or newspaper and wire service stylebooks for guidelines, but you are likely to come away confused by their very different opinions. The New York Times writes the plurals of CD and DVD as CD’s and DVD’s, for example, while The Wall Street Journal writes CDs and DVDs. The rules and the exceptions to them can be maddeningly confusing, even within one source. Take the example of the rules for punctuating possessives, which might cause more errors than anything else in written English (and contributes to the confusion when the Times writes CD’s and DVD’s). Strunk and White’s well-worn Elements of Style is generally a model of clarity and simplicity, but the details of its guide to punctuation can be harrowing. They tell us to form the possessive singular of nouns by adding 's, regardless of the final consonant. Except when you’re writing about Jesus (Jesus always seems to get an exception). Or other ancient proper names ending in either -es or -is as in Moses’ or Isis’. And common phrases like for consciences’ sake and for goodness’ sake. Oh yeah, and possessive pronouns (hers, theirs) don’t get apostrophes. How are we supposed to keep this stuff straight without having to memorize all the rules and their exceptions?

The truth is, the “rules” most of us were taught in school aren’t nearly as firm as we were led to believe. Sentences must include a verb. Really? You can’t start a sentence with and, but or because. And what will happen if I do? Because I do it all the time. Many of these rules were given to us by our English teachers in the hopes of helping us develop more complex thoughts and sentence structures. But others are simply rules transplanted from Latin by people who wanted to impose a little order on the chaos of the English language. Many of these rules, like not ending a sentence with a preposition or not splitting an infinitive, have become more like conventions than hard and fast rules. We only need to be bound by them as long as they help make our writing clearer and easier to read, especially since the stylebooks of major newspapers often can’t agree on how something as basic as the plural or possessive is formed.