As I was browsing through Strunk and White[1] for an upcoming article, I noted some examples of the “wrong”‘ way to write a sentence and the “right” way. And, of course, I agreed; even though I am not a “Strunk and White” man[2], it is hard not to agree with them on most matters grammatical. There is a very big difference between grammatical analysis and writing, however. Consider the following example from the 50th Anniversary Edition of Stunk and White.

I know the second is grammatically correct, just as sure as I know there are times when a writer would rightly use the grammatically wrong construction.[3]

How can I say this? How can I defend it? Very easily it turns out. When I write a sentence, paragraph, article, or book, I just don’t care if the writing is grammatically correct. I just care that the writing works. For example, in a recent song, I wrote:

The issue isn’t that this is poetry and it is okay to play with words and syntax in poetry. I would do and do do the same thing in prose—I just can’t think of any examples at the moment. My point is, however, that while Strunk and White and Fowler and Clean, Well-Lighted Sentences and The Chicago Manual of Style are important to anyone who wants to write well, one must be willing to let them all go to hell. This is writing, not grammar school.

[1] I don’t mean to be cryptic. The book is The Elements of Style by William Strunk Jr. and E. B. White (Charlotte’s Web, Stuart Little). But everybody calls it Strunk and White—perhaps because there are many other books with this title (but none that I know of are about English grammar; they are about things like interior design and knitting) or because writers are a bunch of pretentious twats. On second thought: it is definitely because writers are a bunch of pretentious twats.

[2] Roy Blount Jr. wrote, “After Scott Simon interviewed me on NPR about whether the word ‘e-mail’ needs a hyphen (yes it does) [No it doesn’t! -FM], some listeners, including friends of mine, wondered why I had answered in the affirmative when asked, in passing, ‘Are you a drunken white man?’ Those listeners misheard. ‘Strunk and White man’ was what Scott said.”

[3] In this sentence “sure” is an adverb and does not need an “ly” to announce how I am using it!

According to MSNBC, Donald Trump has announced that he will not run for President of the United States. This is no surprise. I don’t know any reasonable person who thought he would. But the question remains: why did he pretend he was going to run? I don’t think it was to improve the ratings of his show; I think it was just a chance to get a whole lot of attention and he is addicted to attention. This comes on the heals of his “I’ll show you mine if you show me yours” moment with President Obama. Trump said he would show his 2010 tax return if Obama would so his long-form birth certificate. Well, Obama showed his long-form birth certificate (which pretty much put an end to Trump’s entire platform), but Trump didn’t show his tax return. But we already knew that Trump was a liar, so no big deal.

Many have said that Trump would not run for President because he would have to give up his show. I don’t buy that. Sure, he makes a lot of money from the show, but it isn’t much compared to even the lowest estimates of his net worth. His net worth, however, is the reason he won’t run. A major part of his “brand” is that he is super rich: multi-billion-dollar rich. If he had run for President, he would have had to disclose how much money he makes. Most recently, he has claimed that he is worth $7 billion. But we all know what a liar he is. If it turned out that he was worth less than a billion dollars, it would have destroyed his celebrity and therefore his life.

Thus, we won’t have Don Trump to kick around any more!

PS: I have a huge soft-spot for ol’ Tricky Dick. Such is my love for the man that I have written an entire puppet play about him. I’ll post it if anyone asks (and no one will).