The Grey Grammarians and the Alien
Oh the Grey Grammarians! There's a little story circulating among my colleagues on Facebook, about a school visit by one of our children's authors. The class of ten year olds had been asked to write a story, and one child began a sentence with: "Lucy dashed towards..." "Now that's a good place to insert a fronted adverb," the teacher suggested, and changed the perfectly good sentence into: "Quickly, Lucy dashed towards..." The author took it out, explaining that 'dashed' clearly described quickness and speed, but afterwards she was conscience-stricken - after all, the class teacher was the authority, not her. It seems that the Grey Grammarians have recently taken over the teaching of basic English, and have invented new definitions that defy comprehension by colleagues who are literary critics, lecturers and, yes, professional writers. Some of us have re-named the 'fronted adverbial' into 'full fronted adverb' (as in...