{"id":1294,"date":"2010-06-17T17:19:13","date_gmt":"2010-06-17T21:19:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/?p=1294"},"modified":"2010-10-27T12:59:34","modified_gmt":"2010-10-27T16:59:34","slug":"snuck-redux-another-letter-from-our-southern-editor","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2010\/06\/17\/snuck-redux-another-letter-from-our-southern-editor\/","title":{"rendered":"Snuck Redux"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Dear Lorin,<\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;m told a publication calling itself The Awl has <a href=\"http:\/\/www.theawl.com\/2010\/06\/siren-gif-paris-review-reneges-on-language\">blogged<\/a> about our use of <em>snuck<\/em> for <em>sneaked<\/em>, calling out the whole <em>Paris Review<\/em> masthead for this &#147;transgression of English.&#148;<\/p>\n<p>Transgression <em>against<\/em> English, they undoubtedly mean. If English had been transgressed by us, we would have stepped across it and begun writing in a foreign language. However solid an ambition that remains, no one will accuse us of it here. I suppose there&#8217;s no pausing to get basic prepositions correct when you&#8217;re on your way to obsessing over arcane questions of the irregular preterit. But let&#8217;s not be pedantic.<\/p>\n<p>Actually, let&#8217;s be pedantic as hell. It ought to go against any writer&#8217;s grain when people try to pass off schoolmarmish grammarianism as a concern for style. Style is about getting the maximum effect out of words, eliminating unwanted ambiguities, and writing in such a way that readers see things better&mdash;in short, it&#8217;s about meaning. Grammarianism, which is to say, an out-of-control prescriptivism, is about doing things &#147;the right way,&#148; or more often, about giving others grief for not having done so.<\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;m not an antiprescriptivist. Trying to keep your mother tongue honest is noble and even necessary. But a person needs to be objecting to a word on some grounds&mdash;that it&#8217;s inexact or obscure, that it&#8217;s confusing or unbeautiful. What is The Awl&#8217;s problem with <em>snuck<\/em>? As far as one can tell, somebody told them at some point that it was preferable to use <em>sneaked<\/em>. Why, though? We&#8217;ve been <a href=\"http:\/\/blog.oup.com\/2007\/11\/snuck\/\">saying and writing<\/a> <em>snuck<\/em> for at least a hundred and twenty-five years now, in high and low contexts. Everybody knows exactly what it means. Indeed, a big-deal British linguist has theorized that the reason <em>snuck<\/em> emerged as a form to begin with is that it sounds more like what it says. It&#8217;s shorter, faster, more final&mdash;it&#8217;s sneakier. To my ear, <em>sneaked<\/em> has lost the war, and even smells a bit of the lamp.<\/p>\n<p>Admittedly, I come from a place where people still say <em>y&#8217;uns<\/em> (oldest surviving usage of <em>ye<\/em>, according to some scholars), which may disqualify me from pronouncing on such matters.<\/p>\n<p>I wish The Awl the joy of its style sheet, and strongly urge the excellent Mr. Cox and the rest of you to stick to your guns.<\/p>\n<p>Devotedly,<br \/>\nJJS<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Dear Lorin, I&#8217;m told a publication calling itself The Awl has blogged about our use of snuck for sneaked, calling out the whole Paris Review masthead for this &#147;transgression of English.&#148; Transgression against English, they undoubtedly mean. If English had been transgressed by us, we would have stepped across it and begun writing in a [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":15,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1087],"tags":[231,233,234,235],"class_list":["post-1294","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-letter-from-our-southern-editor","tag-grammar","tag-pedantry","tag-prescriptivism","tag-the-awl"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO Premium plugin v25.4 (Yoast SEO v25.4) - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Snuck Redux by John Jeremiah Sullivan<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"June 17, 2010 \u2013 Dear Lorin, I&#039;m told a publication calling itself The Awl has blogged about our use of snuck for sneaked, calling out the whole Paris Review masthead for\" \/>\n<meta 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