Interlude: the subjunctive
“A site visit carried out on 12 July 2023 confirmed that whilst the colour of door is currently pale pink and not white as required by the notice, it is a muted colour and is acceptable to under-enforce the requirements of the enforcement notice.
“It is therefore recommended that the case is closed.”
And, down the page:
In a report to councillors recommending that the council take no further action, the city’s chief planning officer, David Givan, warned that Dickson remained on notice.
See it? In the first extract the subjunctive is not used, and in the second it is. It’s especially interesting because it’s the same kind of subjunctive – the kind that follows “recommend that” in the present tense. I’ve seen that called (with disdain) “the American subjunctive” as if it were some crass vulgarity like spitting tobacco juice on the Queen’s favorite Corgi, but honestly, you need the subjunctive for “it is recommended that” [something be done]. Why do you need it? Because “it is recommended that something is done” makes no sense. It’s done, so there’s no need to recommend it, is there.
The solution would be to avoid the subjunctive by just saying “should” or “must” or similar. But “It is therefore recommended that the case is closed” is just inane. If the case is closed why are you recommending closing it?
Convince me I’m wrong.
Yes, but the Guardian is a British newspaper, and the subjunctive is dying much faster in British English than it is in American English. On the whole I’m old-fashioned enough to use the subjunctive, but many people are not.
Slightly off-topic personal anecdote, but I have no idea what a subjunctive is (I’ll have to go look it up now), and I wonder if the reason for that is French immersion. Considering the fact that I’m a high school dropout, I’m rather proud of my at-least intermediate-level grammar & writing skills. But I got my elementary education in the French immersion program, so I was taught very little in English. Strange thing about learning two languages at once is that you kind of get a feel for grammar and structure just by virtue of switching between the two sets of rules all the time. But what you don’t get is any formal teaching about the names of such rules, at least in English. Grammar terms like participle or conjunction or subjunctive were never uttered once in any class I attended, and probably would never have been even if I had stuck with high school. (I’m pretty sure I learned conjunction from the American kids’ TV programming that beamed across the lake from Buffalo.) You just sort of gleaned the rules by comparing and contrasting against French. Or something. A kind of languagey osmosis? Anyways, we French immersion kids generally came up reasonably eloquent, despite the total lack of formal English grammar training. I was married to an editor for 12 years and I admired not just his language ability but his formal knowledge of English grammar rules and terminology. It’s neat! Anyways, I’m off to google what a subjunctive is.
I was away from school the day we had subjunctives. Then I was given a special catch-up assignment on them by our orthodox grammarian of an English teacher, who had written a dull-as-proverbial-dishwater textbook on grammar and on the strength of that considered himself an authority. So I did the assignment, but then the dog ate it. That’s my story and I’m sticking to it.
So my grammar test for any piece of text is simple: does it look right, or not.? Does it fit in with the style of the stuff I have read over the years.?
I read somewhere later that the structure of English grammar is the result of force-fitting its words into the categories of Latin grammar; which is a bit like trying to fit a a walrus into a set of Grandpa’s pyjamas. If you ask me. Except that nobody ever does. (Sob.).
There’s WAY more to learning the subjunctive in French than there is in English. That’s because English is very simplified compared to French, Italian, etc. To make up for it though we have spelling n pronunciation torture. I was thinking about the -ough words the other day – through, rough, bought, cough, although, slough, Slough, bough.
I didn’t learn to use the subjunctive in school, but picked it up from family etc as people do learn language. I think I was taught the rules at some point but I’d already tacitly absorbed them.
it’s strange, with two parents who taught English (albeit they divorced when I was very young), I missed out on all that. I was taught all the basic verb, adverb, noun, etc, conventions; but subjunctives, participles, etc I don’t ever recall hearing mentioned in my schooling. Mind you when I was going through schooling there was a wave of ‘relaxed’ education sweeping the country where we were seemingly supposed just to absorb maths and English magically. My English teachers were heavily into literature analysis, drama, and poetry, not grammar or syntax.
As a result my writing is largely self taught, with the effect of years of professional review tossed in. Early on that meant stiflingly passive voice which was the publication style. More recently because I’m writing for lay people in a professional context that means a plain language style. Which can feel a bit like eating cheap vanilla ice cream every day frankly. Then, when I’m commenting here, I’m usually pushed for time and still thinking about work, so I make all sorts of stupid and hurried mistakes. Oh well. Like Omar, I tend to fall into the ‘does that sound right’ camp. That requires time to re-read, which I seldom have here.
On the OP…
Is a classic piece of bureaucratic phrasing. A functionary telling an elected body that they should or must do something would cause gasps of indrawn breath and accusations of overstepping. At the least it would be taking far too much ownership, and therefore responsibility. Saying could, would be seen as waffling too much. I think to make it future tense, rather than present, they should have said “…the case be closed,” rather than “…is closed.”
I don’t actually remember being taught the subjunctive (in English) either; that’s why I only think I remember being taught the rules at some point. I think there was a book…a chunky little book with a black and white cover.
But grammar by itself is still a class in the basic U.S. English curriculum, right? I mean, not just “English class” but grammar, specifically? Surely some of the grammar rules were taught formally for most English students? In my school there was TONS of French grammar — all I can remember is endless, endless, endless French grammar (such is the French language) — but as far as English went, it was forbidden to speak a word of the language inside the building until roughly what’s called Middle School these days, and then it was strictly contained to English class, in which we launched right into the beginner classics and how to write a three-part essay: “Welcome to English! You’re finally allowed to speak English in school. Isn’t this fun? Now here’s Romeo & Juliet; compare and contrast it with Nineteen Eighty-Four or The Chrysalids (or whatever) in at least 500 words. Next week it’s The Outsiders and Othello. As for spelling and such, we’ll just assume you’ve figured that out on your own. It’s not that different from French; you’ll be fine.”
(Math was the weirdest to adapt to when we got old enough to be allowed to do it in English, because they use a different numerical syntax. Commas, decimals and spaces aren’t the same in French. By high school the French immersion program has you alternating year-by-year between math in English and math in French, but it’s tricky because you’re lurching between syntaxes.)
Yes I think so, it’s just that I don’t remember learning it. I don’t mean “I don’t remember learning it so I doubt it was taught” – I just mean I don’t remember.
Your schooling sounds hilarious!
There is an increasingly common argument that insistence on correct grammar use is an elitist view and that so long as one understands what has been written the grammar is unimportant. I can accept that viewpoint for informal writing even though it can be almost painful to read at times, but I believe that formal writing requires the precision and clarity that only correct grammar use can provide.
Journalists are by far the worst offenders, their editors are failing in their duties to maintain high standards, and it insults the intelligence of the readers. One does not pay broadsheet prices to read tabloid-standard writing.
Acolyte of Sagan @9:
Correct grammar, among other things, is important in technical writing. For example: standard operating procedures, batch production records. In my profession, if they are poorly written, the procedure may not be done correctly. In the best case, one will have to write a deviation (not fun), and the batch of product may or may not have to be scrapped. In the worst case, BOOM (even less fun).