Says Who

How do you decide what counts as good English? In her book on usage and grammar, Anne Curzan argues that language is not a fixed code but a living social system. Every time you correct a word or notice someone’s phrasing, you engage two internal characters she calls your inner grammando and your inner wordie. The grammando enforces rules and traditions, while the wordie delights in evidence of change and variation. The art of speaking and writing well, Curzan insists, is about learning when to listen to each of these instincts.

This book helps you see language rules as layered, historical, and purposeful—not just arbitrary prescriptions. It shows that what you call 'errors' or 'rules' often reflect older prejudices, editorial conventions, or power dynamics. Curzan blends linguistic research, usage debates, and examples from both everyday life and scholarly corpora to show how English continually reshapes itself. From double negatives to singular they, from 'impactful' to 'irregardless,' she invites you to become a better listener, writer, and citizen of language.

Two Inner Voices: Grammando and Wordie

Your grammando thrives on clarity, tradition, and external authority. It thrives on Bryan Garner’s rules and the preferences of editors and teachers who treat English as a craft of restraint. Your wordie, by contrast, loves watching the species of words evolve: it notices verbing, new slang, and the way social media accelerates lexical creativity. Curzan models how these two voices coexist in practice, as in her anecdote about debating whether 'impact' may be used as a verb at a wedding reception. She doesn’t crown either voice the winner—she shows you how to weigh context, audience, and evidence before deciding.

Evidence, Not Instinct Alone

To shift your perspective, Curzan teaches you to consult corpora such as COCA (the Corpus of Contemporary American English) or historical databases like Google Books. When you see a word used widely by careful writers, that’s evidence of change at work. Dictionaries, usage panels, and house style guides act as informed but human arbiters; their labels—'informal,' 'nonstandard,' 'slang'—are social signals, not universal truths. In exploring the American Heritage Usage Panel, on which she once served, Curzan exposes how authority is negotiated, not absolute. The panel might reject funner or finalize in one era but embrace them decades later.

Language Change and Social Meaning

Behind every usage controversy lies a deeper social story. Double negatives once filled Chaucer’s lines, yet modern grammar teachers outlaw them because of 18th-century prescriptive reasoning. Likewise, pronunciations like 'aks' for 'ask' reflect legitimate historical forms later stigmatized by class and race bias. You begin to see that linguistic 'error' often means 'deviation from those in power.' By historically tracing these patterns, Curzan invites you to replace judgment with curiosity—and to recognize that respecting diverse dialects is both linguistically and ethically sound.

Writing and Editing with Awareness

Curzan connects linguistic generosity to practical communication. In formal writing or teaching, you can describe rules without vilifying alternatives. She recommends gentle correction and explaining why conventions exist: commas separating clauses, semicolons linking complete thoughts, or pronoun forms such as who versus whom. Understanding origins—like Bishop Lowth’s Latin-inspired proscriptions—helps you choose wisely rather than blindly.

Even punctuation debates, from Oxford commas to dash overuse, reveal the dynamic tug between aesthetics and clarity. Style guides differ not because one is 'right' but because they serve distinct audiences. The same principle holds for grammar debates: you adjust for rhetorical precision, not tribal allegiance to rules.

Inclusive Language and Power

Language also enacts inclusion. Curzan shows how pronoun changes such as singular they or titles like 'first-year student' instead of 'freshman' respond to real shifts in visibility and respect. Speaking inclusively isn’t 'political correctness' gone awry; it’s social listening. Words shape who feels seen and who doesn't. In these chapters, she links linguistic choices to civic responsibility: each speaker decides whether their words widen or narrow the circle of belonging.

Why These Choices Matter

Ultimately, Curzan reframes your relationship with English: rules are not commandments but evolving tools. Learning grammar and usage history arms you to make decisions grounded in both clarity and empathy. When your grammando bristles at 'irregardless,' your wordie can check corpus data; when a student says 'aks,' your wordie can recognize heritage, not error. Being language-savvy means balancing accuracy, kindness, and awareness of how language, identity, and power intertwine.

Curzan’s central message

Treat grammar as a conversation between the past and present, not as a battlefield. Combine descriptive knowledge with social sensitivity so that your choices affirm communication rather than constrain it.

This philosophy of balance—between guidance and openness, between rule and result—makes Curzan’s work not only a grammar manual but a moral discourse on how we treat one another through words. You finish the book fluent not only in linguistic facts but in empathy for the speakers around you.

You often assume grammatical rules are timeless truths, but Curzan shows that many are recent inventions. The prohibition against double negatives, the distrust of split infinitives, and objections to 'impactful' emerged from centuries of prescriptive codification, often rooted in class and logic metaphors from Latin. Bishop Robert Lowth in the 18th century turned preferences into rules; Lindley Murray and later Strunk and White canonized them into school grammar.

How Rules Fossilize

Once printed in textbooks, prescriptive advice becomes moralized, separating 'educated' from 'ignorant.' Double negatives—normal in Chaucer and Shakespeare—became taboo under Lowth's logic-driven model that two negatives must yield a positive. Curzan uses such examples to show that language rules often reflect social ambition more than syntax. When middle classes sought linguistic respectability, they adopted prestige norms that marginalized working-class or minority speech.

Descriptive vs Prescriptive Knowledge

Linguistics describes what speakers do; prescriptivism prescribes what they ought to do. Curzan’s strength is showing you how to hold both views simultaneously. When you teach or edit, describe rules honestly but also reveal their histories. Recognize that grammar guides clarity, but not justice. Negative concord in African American English, for instance, is entirely grammatical within that system. Rejecting such patterns as 'incorrect' reflects prejudice, not language science.

Why Rule History Matters Today

When you understand that 'proper' English is an evolving agreement, you gain freedom. You can still teach standard editing but with humility. You can explain that 'ain’t' appears in Dickens, that 'irregardless' meets every linguistic test of a word, and that singular they solves a genuine communicative need. Knowing history allows you to make informed stylistic choices without equating correctness with intelligence or morality.

Key reminder

Every rule you learned has a birth date, a champion, and an argument. Once you trace those, you see English not as a cage but as a living institution that keeps rewriting its own constitution.

For Curzan, this awareness is not license for chaos but a map for empathy. When you stop treating grammar as morality, you can better serve clarity and connection—the reasons language rules exist at all.

When you 'look it up in the dictionary,' you invoke authority. But Curzan reveals that lexicographers are describers with judgment, not referees issuing absolute rulings. Every dictionary reflects an editorial philosophy about inclusion, labeling, and register. Merriam-Webster tends toward descriptivism, American Heritage once relied on expert consensus through its Usage Panel, and Oxford balances tradition with documentation.

Who Decides What Is a Word

Lexicographers track real use in corpora, magazines, and literature. They weigh durability—does a new coinage merely flash or endure? Curzan shows the life cycle through examples such as 'finalize,' once derided, now routine. Their inclusion choices are bets on longevity. When the public blames a dictionary for 'endorsing' slang, it misunderstands the institution’s role. Dictionaries don’t legislate; they document.

Labels and Judgment

Labels like nonstandard or informal seem objective but carry social weight. Calling 'ain’t' nonstandard stigmatizes speakers, not the grammar. The uproar over Webster’s Third in 1961 stemmed from this tension: editor Philip Gove emphasized usage evidence over superiority rankings, prompting critics to call it permissive. Curzan frames this debate as ongoing—between those who treat dictionaries as mirrors and those who want them as moral guides.

From Panels to Practice

Curzan’s tenure on the American Heritage Usage Panel illustrates authority construction in real time. Panelists vote on contentious words; you read the percentages in entries. They provide guidance for tone and formality, not decree rightness. When a rendering says '70% of panelists reject,' you should read it as 'some audiences may still object.' The takeaway: use dictionaries as data-informed companions, not courts of truth.

By demystifying dictionaries, you gain confidence to track language empirically—through corpora, not folklore. You start to see English as a democratic collaboration between its users and its chroniclers.

Curzan moves from words to sounds to reveal how pronunciation carries social meaning. Variants like 'aks' for 'ask,' 'expresso' for 'espresso,' and 'nucular' for 'nuclear' provoke reactions that say more about listeners than about linguistic competence. Pronunciation patterns function as markers of identity and region. Language prejudice often hides within what looks like aesthetic preference.

Historical and Phonological Realities

The much-mocked 'aks' has medieval roots in Old English 'acsian.' Over time, dialect divisions and racialization attached stigma to it, while equally metathesized forms like 'asteriks' escape notice. This asymmetry exposes how judgments about correctness entangle with who speaks, not just what is said. Similarly, pronunciations such as 'mischievous' with four syllables or 'nucular' emerge from phonological analogy and processing ease, not ignorance.

Hearing Without Bias

Curzan challenges you to replace ridicule with inquiry. Ask why a variant appears and what history it carries. Regional shifts, sound changes, or analogical patterns often explain what feels 'lazy.' She notes that even so-called standard pronunciations change—compare the vanishing /r/ in British speech or the changing vowel in 'caught' and 'cot.' Sociolinguistics, she argues, gives you tools to perceive richness rather than deficit.

A practical guideline

If a pronunciation disrupts comprehension, adjust for clarity. Otherwise, let diversity speak; it tells stories about community and change.

Hearing accents and variants as culture rather than error helps undo linguistic prejudice—and reveals the beauty of English’s plurality.

Language reform is rarely just about words—it’s about who belongs. Curzan reframes so-called political correctness as a movement to make every speaker visible. When norms shift from stewardess to flight attendant or freshman to first-year, critics claim loss of tradition; Curzan sees expansion of respect. Even small word choices—like replacing 'you guys' with 'you all'—signal whose presence you mark as default.

Pronouns and Recognition

Singular they exemplifies this inclusive ethic. Its use stretches back centuries, but its reemergence today acknowledges nonbinary identities and practical efficiency. Style guides from Merriam-Webster to the AP now embrace it. Curzan herself notes that in formal roles, she sometimes added a footnote explaining her deliberate use—an act of transparency that reframes grammar as social awareness rather than rebellion.

The Politics of Naming

Who decides whose names and pronouns count? Curzan draws from media debates about Ben Carson and Kareem Abdul-Jabbar to illustrate how inclusion challenges entrenched privilege. Calling people what they ask to be called is not indulgence but cooperation. Marked and unmarked terms—like 'surgeon' versus 'woman surgeon'—reveal where bias hides. Removing unnecessary marking broadens neutrality and respect.

Listening Generously

In practice, inclusivity means curiosity about habits you inherited. When someone proposes a language change, listen first; ask what harm the old form did. Language cannot singlehandedly fix inequality, but it can embody courtesy and attention. Curzan encourages small, consistent adjustments that make environments more humane.

By embracing inclusive language, you participate in updating English’s social contract—proof that respect evolves through words as much as through laws.

Curzan’s later chapters bring theory into editing and composition. She surveys the battlefield of sentence-level myths—split infinitives, dangling modifiers, passive voice, prepositions at the end—and restores nuance. Her advice links linguistic reality to reader psychology: every convention balances rhythm, comprehension, and context.

Punctuation as Rhetoric

Commas, semicolons, and dashes are expressive tools, not traps. The comma splice remains the rare forbidden zone, but other comma uses depend on rhythm. The Oxford comma clarifies lists; house styles vary, so follow context. Semicolons elegantly join independent clauses ('It snowed; classes were canceled') or organize complex lists. Dashes add emphasis but lose impact when overused. Hyphens evolve with usage: 'e-mail' becomes 'email,' reflecting visual and social change. Curzan’s rule: favor clarity and consistency over zealotry.

Grammar in Motion

At the word level, she dismantles myths. A split infinitive like 'to boldly go' is perfectly normal; stranded prepositions in 'Who were you talking to?' are idiomatic. The passive voice, often maligned, can serve scientific neutrality ('The samples were measured') or strategic diplomacy ('Mistakes were made'). Effective writing chooses the structure that best fits purpose and tone. Flow, she explains through Gopen and Swan’s research, arises when sentences obey the 'known-new contract'—present known information first, then introduce new details.

Meaning Before Mechanism

By understanding how readers process syntax, you improve clarity without losing personality. Avoid dogma: start sentences with conjunctions when it aids cohesion; use participial modifiers consciously. Every punctuation mark or grammatical choice serves rhetorical intent. When in doubt, imagine your audience’s patience and expectation, not your teacher’s red pen.

Editorial takeaway

Good writing respects both linguistic science and reader intuition. Flow results not from rule worship but from intentional structure and empathy toward how readers think.

In the end, Curzan delivers grammar not as punishment but as toolkit—an evolving set of strategies to help you write clearly, inclusively, and powerfully in a living language.