6. Who Makes the Rules?

Star-Spangled Stories. Article 6.

Who Makes the Rules?

Who decides what correct English is?

Who owns English anyway?

Imagine that a committee of language experts met in London, solemnly opened a book and decided: "From tomorrow, ending a sentence with a preposition is forbidden." The English-speaking world would probably not even notice. English has no worldwide institution that could tell all its speakers how they must speak.

But that does not mean English has no rules. If someone said "She are happy yesterday", standard English would run into real problems with agreement and tense. It is a completely different question, though, whether "Who are you talking to?" is correct, or whether we must say the much more formal "To whom are you talking?". Both sentences can be grammatically correct, but they fit different situations.

This brings us to an important difference: some rules describe how a language really works; others rather express how someone thinks careful, formal or "elegant" English should look.

Two ways of looking at language

The two approaches do not have to be at war. A teacher needs to teach students the standard form of the language, because they will meet it in exams, at work and in official documents. A linguist needs to understand why speakers of a certain dialect say something different. Recommending a suitable style is one thing; declaring a natural language feature to be nonsense is another.

A fateful mistake: English is not Latin

From the 17th century on, there were attempts in England to unify and refine the language. Scholars often admired Latin as the language of learning and logical order. Some of them therefore wanted English to follow similar principles. But Latin and English work differently.

An influential example was the poet and critic John Dryden, who in 1672 criticized older authors for prepositions at the end of sentences. In the 18th century, a lot of attention went to the textbook A Short Introduction to English Grammar (1762), written by Robert Lowth, later Bishop of London. His work helped to shape the idea of school English grammar. But it would be unfair to make Lowth the inventor of all the later bans: in his time he could tell different styles apart, and he himself accepted some constructions as natural English idioms. [1, 2]

Myth 1: A sentence must never end with a preposition

Who are you waiting for? is a completely normal English question. The more formal For whom are you waiting? is also possible, but in normal conversation it often sounds stiff. In English, the preposition naturally goes to the end in questions and relative clauses: That's the person I spoke to. Many modern usage guides explicitly accept this construction. [3]

The famous joke about "nonsense up with which I will not put", which turns the sentence around awkwardly because of the preposition, is often attributed to Winston Churchill. But there is no historical evidence that he really said it. [3]

Myth 2: Nothing may go between to and the verb

The sentence "She decided to carefully check the results" contains a so-called split infinitive. For a long time students were told that this construction was wrong. But "to check" is not a one-word Latin infinitive. In English an adverb can stand between to and the base form of the verb – and sometimes it is even the clearest solution.

The ban only spread widely in the 19th century; it was not the result of a single medieval reform. Today the MLA Style Center accepts split infinitives if they make the sentence more natural or more precise. [4, 5]

Myth 3: An English sentence must not start with And or But

"It was raining. But we went out anyway." We know this kind of link from books, newspapers and everyday storytelling. It is not a grammatical error: a conjunction can also connect whole sentences and stress a contrast or the continuation of a story. Only in some types of formal text is it wise to use it sparingly. Writing good sentences does not mean mechanically banning certain words from their beginnings. [6]

Myth 4: Two negatives always cancel each other out like in maths

In many non-standard varieties of English, "I ain't got no money" has a clearly negative meaning: the speaker has no money. This system is called negative concord – several negative words together express a single negation. In the past it was also found in the English that later became the basis of the standard. [7, 8]

In standard English for school or a work email, however, we recommend "I haven't got any money" or "I have no money". This does not prove that the other varieties have no grammar. They have their own rules – they are just different from the rules of today's standard style. And be careful: the sentence "It is not impossible" is a different type of double negative, which does exist in modern standard English and really does change the meaning.

Myth 5: They can only be plural

What do we do with the sentence "Someone left their umbrella here"? The word someone refers to one person, but their is the natural choice when we do not know the person's gender or it does not matter. This singular they is definitely not an invention of the internet: it is recorded in English as early as the 14th century and was used by important writers. [9]

Today they is also used for specific people who prefer this pronoun. This meaning is historically newer, but it builds on the ability of English to use they for individuals. In both cases it is important to distinguish historical fact, today's usage and stylistic suitability.

Myth 6: Less must never be used before countable nouns

The textbook advice is simple and useful: "fewer mistakes", but "less time". But if we look at real language, we find that people normally say "less than five minutes", "less than twenty euros" or "ten items or less". The word less is also used when we think of something as an amount, a time, a price or a distance. [10]

For students the most practical approach is to learn the rule fewer + ordinary countable plural nouns, less + uncountable nouns, and then get to know its fixed exceptions. There is no need to call a grammar court for every trip to the supermarket.

Myth 7: Ain't is not a real English word

Ain't is a real word that native speakers use. But it does not fit most formal texts, and in school standard English it is considered non-standard. You can meet it in dialects, music, dialogues in fiction and everyday informal speech. So the question is not "does it exist or not?", but "who uses it, in what situation and how will it come across?" [8]

So who sets the standard?

Today's standard English is the result of a long development and the work of schools, publishers, the media, offices and the authors of usage guides. Dictionaries like the Oxford English Dictionary or Merriam-Webster mainly document language: they follow real evidence of use, meanings and changes in words. Putting a word in a dictionary is usually not a permit that finally allows it to exist. [11]

Style guides play a different role – for example The Chicago Manual of Style or APA Style. Their job is to make texts of a certain type consistent, clear and professional. Two publishers can differ in punctuation, spelling or recommended style without either of them denying the grammar of English as a whole.

The third source of the standard is the speakers themselves. Their habits change, but not chaotically. A new word or construction spreads through family, friends, schools, work, books, television and the internet. And linguists describe this development using language corpora – large collections of real texts and recordings.

So what should a student of English do?

It is sensible to know and actively use standard English. If you are writing a maturita essay, a work email or an academic text, stick to safe and clear structures. At the same time, there is no need to label all dialects and informal expressions as "bad English". Some are perfectly regular within their own varieties; others are just less suitable in a given situation.

Conclusion: rules help. But they are not all the same.

English is not an anarchy without grammar. It has a complex and surprisingly stable system. But some school rules are not universal laws; they are stylistic advice, historical preferences or simplifications for beginners. And sometimes they really were an attempt to force English to behave like Latin.

Knowing grammar rules is important. But it is even more useful to know where they come from, when to use them and when a piece of good advice has turned into an unfounded legend. Language is not made by textbooks alone. It is made mainly by the people who speak it.