DFW violently annoys me once more

[wwidsith]

Over at Language Log - and I warn you, I can feel my anger levels rising already as I start to write about this - there is a link to a so-called "Grammar Test" devised by David Foster Wallace when he was running college workshops. It fills me with fury more than I can really express. It's a list of ten sentences, each containing one crucial

Comments

[herself_nyc]

This kind of sheds light on one of the myriad reasons he might have had for committing suicide.

In other words, I share your exasperation.

[ruakh]

I have to say, idiotic as this test is, I'm still surprised at all the well-educated people who didn't get any of his answers. Going into it knowing what sort of thing to expect, I got six (1, 2, 3, 4, 6, and 9), and there were another two (7 and 8) where I identified his complaint, more or less, but resolved it differently. Further, your comments for numbers 4 and 8 suggest that you were familiar with these prohibitions, at least. What am I missing? Do you define "right" as meaning not just that you knew what answer he wanted, but also that you agreed with it?

[wwidsith]

Yes and no. I guessed the problem for many of them, but still dismissed it as silly, and was really genuinely surprised that anyone would still think if=whether or ‘one another’ was wrong. Part of the problem comes from the fact that they're made-up sentences...like I guessed the issue with 4, but then immediately realised that moving ‘only’ would make the sentence sound ridiculously forced (which it does), so I thought ‘surely he can't be thinking...’ My instinct with 6 was to remove ‘whence’ altogether. 7 I didn't even know was an issue at all. And 5 and 10 just baffled me completely.

[ruakh]

I see what you mean.

By the way, they're not actually made-up sentences. To quote Amy McDaniel (the lady who brought this worksheet to the Internet):

> not sure exactly what you mean, but if you mean by the content of the questions, then i should note that these were all sentences he lifted straight from whatever essays students in my class had turned in the few weeks before-he didn’t make them up, just chose them to teach us certain rules

So he's not just whatever-he-is enough to believe these rules, he's actually whatever-he-is enough to notice violations of these rules in running text! (Admittedly, grading essays isn't exactly the same as normal reading, but still.)

[wwidsith]

Interesting. It's amazing to me that anyone would read #4 and think there was anything wrong with it.

[wwidsith]

Really, which four?

[cicipsychobunny]

Well, at least I can now say that at least I'm not as prescriptivist as some nutcases ...

[wwidsith]

‘I am a careful writer, you are a prescriptivist, he is a pedant’...

[weofodthignen]

When I read the topic I at first thought you meant Dallas-Fort Worth Airport