Writing of grammars

The tradition of grammar writing goes back at least to the 17th century in England. The playwright Ben Jonson was the author of a grammar and John Wallis published an influential Grammatica linguae Anglicanae in 1653. This led to a series of works offering guidelines for what was then deemed correct English. The next century saw more grammars in this vein such as Joseph Priestley’s The rudiments of English grammar (1761). But the pinnacle of prescriptive frenzy was reached by Bishop Robert Lowth (1710-1787) who published his Short introduction to English grammar in 1762. This work was influential in school education and enjoyed several editions and reprints. It is responsible for a whole series of do’s and don’ts in English such as using whom as the direct object form of who or not ending a sentence with a preposition as in The woman he shared a room with. Lowth also formulated a rule for shall and will for the future tense in English which has been reinterated ever since but which is however non-existent for many speakers (the reduced form ’ll [l] is normal and the full form will [wil] is used for emphasis while shall is completely neglected). Other influential authors of this ilk are Lindley Murray (1745-1826) who produced an English grammar in 1794 and William Cobbett whose English grammar appeared in 1829.

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