to take caree of the foldable population and we knew we'd get through it together. >> host: governor kristi noem of south dakota is the author. the book "not my first rodeo: lessons from the heartland." governor noem, thanks so much for joining us try to all, thank you. appreciate it. enjoyed visiting with you. >> middle and high school students it's your time to shine. you are invited to participate in this year's cspan's studentcam documentary competition. in light of the upcoming midterm elections picture yourself as a newly elected member of congress. we ask this as competitors what is your top priority and why? make a five to six minute video that shows the importance of your issue from opposing and supporting perspective. ill be afraid to take risks with your documentary. be bold amongst the $100,000 in cash prizes is a $5000 grand prize. videos must be submitted by

january 20, 2023. visit our website at studentcam.org for competition rules, tips, resources and a step-by-step guide. >> there are a lot of places to get political information but only at the c-span2 you get it straight from the source. no matter where you are from or where you stand on the issues, c-span is america's network. unfiltered, unbiased, word for word. if it happens here or here or here, or anywhere that matters, america is watching on c-span. powered by cable. >> hi, everyone. thank you so much for joining us tonight. we are so excited for you all to be your for ellen jovin who's going to address the cameras and repair i'm sure we've all seen them. we are filming for a documentary for allen as well as sell o

be aired on c-span. so you guys might be in the video just basin with camera is especially if you ask questions during our q&a portion which will be happening later. if you have any questions or concerns with pink children can feel free to reach out to anyone of us are go visit the info desk on the other side of the store. there will be a q&a portion where an microphone is going to be passed around.nt if you guys can ask questions into the mic for the documentary ever c-span that would be very useful. and the just going to give ellen a quick introduction before letter take it away. ellen jovin is the founder of syntaxes, a communication skills training consultancy. she holds degrees from harvard in german and ucla and comparative literature and the studies 25 languages just for. fun. and she lives with her husband in new york city. i do not going to let alan take it away. thank you so much for being as she discusses "rebel with a clause."

>> thank you. [applause] >> hello, all you grammar nerds. welcome to the grammar table. i find myself asking a question right now, not if you but of me, myself. how did i end up here? because i didn't see this coming four years ago when i acquired a folding table on the internet and made a little grammar table sign and then started taking this outside of my building. i think i should a philosophy right away. for me grammar is not about a set of commandments and restrictions to make people feel bad about the sentence they just wrote. i certainly care about principles of sound writing an established language patterns. for me grammar though is a sense of adventure. it's this wildland of linguistic

possibilities and it's crowded not just in the grammar lessons. my interest in grammar is crowded not just in the grammar lessons of my childhood, which were very extensive and completely 100% joyouslu for me. i absolutely loved every moment of every grammar thing ever did in school. we can add to that spelling, cursive, all that stuff. i just absolutely love that. i'm guessing if you hear that some of you have similar feelings, or maybe early childhood traumas that you're hoping to overcome tonight. either way, i just, i think of grammar, i come at it from multipled angles. on top of the grammar lessons that have as a child i think the reading that it did throughout my life had huge effect on how i think about language and all the permutations and possibilities. i meet a lot of people at this table who think that a sentence has to be done a certain way or that you can't begin with this

word i can't begin with that word.he if you read why did you see that there's a lot of stuff going on in the writing of excellent writers from across centuries and from across different varieties of english. i like to thinka of it as a bigger world of possibility that a set of what you cannot do or the will be negative consequences. so let's establish that first. i'm not sure exactly what the dominant anchor for me, the primary anchor for me was the just launched me into this life of grammar nerdd to read. i think i will be sure i like to invent words as necessary here when i was in eighth grade i had a sentence diagramming class ms. i'm still ini touch with her, naturally. and do you all remember sentence diagramming? if you don't know and talk to we can test your memory, okay?

this is old-fashioned kind not the syntax that you might see in linguistics classes. this was a tool that was used a lot more probably it stopped around the time, to large extent it stoppedwa around the time i s through school. i had it in the 1970s-1979 school year. and not that many people were still doing it but there were still plenty of us. so if i gave you a sentence would you know how to diagram it still? this is a moment of grammar nostalgia. so the dog ate my grammar homework. the dog ate my grammar homework. probably a sense that has been uttered, so do allll remember, those of you who did it, you know there's a horizontal line and thenft what goes on the left-hand side of the line? yes, so the dog, the subject, you're right the dog there in between the dog and the verb what happens?

if you're saying to yourself or was i when this happened? and may just not of been done ap your school and really doesn't matter, you can have a long and happy life without ever knowing this but for some of us it was a source of great joy, or tear, dipping in which person we are. there's a big line, dog, then eight and then what happens with the grammar homework? you remember what happens next? this is were starting to get more detail. you know, what happens? [inaudible] >> so the, the word though goes on the line after dark. we have a big line going to the horse online, ate and women object, homework. homework, you just go to the line i think of the difference between that and the other line because the homework there, my grammar homework underneath that. okay we not going to have just been all-time on this but i come for me an important component of

the grammar table is not just the grammar itself but also the grammar nostalgia. back when we were kids what do we learn? how do we do things? how do we communicate and write today? moment.o this. it's just a lot of fun to think about these things.s. for example, i have on the grammar table right now i bring this out for purposes of nostalgia. this is the illustrated edition of the elements of style. do you remember that? yours probably did not have -- this was i think a special issue from 2002-ish maybe. i just want to find you the picture of the basset hound. can't find it right now but their beautiful drawings in a integer get sick of reading the actual words you can just lookeo at the picture. a lot of people, out to the table, remember the elements of style. we talk to diagram, we talk about elementss of style. we just shoot the breeze about whatever grammar things to want to talk about.

on september 21, 2018, that was the inaugural day of the grammar table and i had waited until it was less hot because i'm not, my grammar deteriorates rapidly when it exceeds 85° outside. so i had to wait. i had the idea in july. july is a very bad grammar table month. i waited until cooled down. september 21, 2018 i walked outside my building. i'm right next to an express subway stop pics i set the table down. at express subway stop and then when i was unfolding it i felt a little self-conscious. because being on the street it's not something that a a really anticipated happening in my life. and it's. kind of dirty by the subway. and just,lot ofst dirt i felt like people would be thinking i was up to something unsavory, maybe some of them still think i'm up to something unsavory. but as is unfolding the table i saw a couple standing by the

subway station. they were looking over and whispering and kind of smiling. i could tell they were grammar nerds. so they'd seen the sign and as soon as the as a woman le over and he had asked aspect first three grammar question. this took place in 60 seconds. there was no waiting. mick and at that moment i know okay the table is going to be okay. there's going to be people who want to hang out with me and talk about things. and from that moment and just i've had i've sat up all over new york city. people come up to a me of all ages, all demographics, all educational levels and asking questions about parts of speech, about punctuation, about whether grandchilden says i went shoulde me or send me when it should be all right. young people complain about all people. old people complain about young people.e it's just like theirs, it's kind ofit come is not hostile usuall.

it's more sort of joke around, grammar banter. that's how i think of it. so i did that for a while in new york city, started moving around, took the grammar table on the soviet very bad. too noisy. there are practical considerations. pretty soon i was on the road. the reason i was able to take the grammar table on the road is because i has a husband who is standing over there by the art sign, grant johnson, who is actually willing to do things like this. so we went all over the country from throughout 2019 and it is the beginning of 2020 we went to 47 states with the grammar table. so i been in, i've been in 49 towns and cities because into states we picked to places before realized i was running out of state time. so we went to towns and cities all over the united states. grant is making grammar table document or because what could be better than a grammar

documentary? and we're doing this today is a very important sentimental moment. i thank you for participating in it with me in it because -- wow, that was. because this is the 48th state and it is the first time since january of 2020 that i have acquired a new grammar table state for my grammar table journeys. so the only two states left, i don't think maybe connecticut one of the three missing states which you may say okay that's a little weird because you lived right next to connecticut. you know how it is with familiarity. you think i'll just see that the person later, i'll see that state later while in january 2020 soon, , yeah, thins start to close down. so not long after that. i has been made yet but now here today extremely excited and now the only two left our alaska and hawaii. so when two weeks we're going to

-- [laughing] i do know that connecticut is right next to me. i feel like i need to clarify that. i've had questions that have amazed me. i've had to learn details that astonish me. one of my favorite ones came early on when aen young woman right outside my apartment building came up to me. she was in waiting around for people asking grammar questions. she came up to me and she told me that she loved footnotes. so much that she had a footnote tattooed on her foot, and it said seven ibid., she showed me a picture it was winter so she didn't have on sale and she showed me a picture, or fall then she should be on her phone and i felt, i felt complete. another woman remembered learning of prepositions on in school. do any of you remember knowing a prepositions on? i do not. but she started singing it and shera choreographed dance to itn fifth grade that she still remembers so she did a little

piece of her fifth-grade preposition dance. so for me the table is about grammar, it's about language. it's about the thing that connects ss human being but it is so much more than that for me because i've been able to talk to people who have wildly different backgrounds, political and social beliefs. i'm struck on a regular basis by the polarization in our country at this table we can negotiate, we can negotiate over eight, and office will get nothing that happens at the end.ut there may be mock rage about the absence or presence of an oxford, but in an people laugh and they go home happy. i've been able to make tons of new friends, talk to people i would never have met before and this has serious of been the most movingly experience a whole life. i actually came emotional butok are not going to cry. and because i really, you know,

i'm the grammar table i don't need to talk more. i do love talking, don't get me wrong. or i wouldn't do this. but i would like to be, i would like to hear, what would you like to know? do you have grammar questions? do you have, you know how you did you -- i don't, anything. you have any questions. we can use the anchor as a talk as we continue. >> so when i announced at dinner a few days ago that i was coming to this event, my mother me, , y daughter and i had a somewhat heated conversation about -- >> i love family grammar. >> about ending a sentence or a phrase with a preposition. >> right. >> and my mother on one side was, of course you never do it. it's meaningless, it's useless. and my daughter said, well, that's how language changes. this is the evolution of language. and i'm smack in the middle. i see both other sites. i don't love the people end up

phrases with prepositions, or sentences, but i do see my daughters point. does the evolution of language specifically related to this really happen ins my lifetime? >> yes, absolutely. and some things i think are, so language m change, i mean, evenn my own work i've seen language change accelerate in some ways i the internet. for example, has been i have a company, syntax is one of the things i offer email adequate training. when i started to email training i always hyphenateca e-mail because you know, it seemed like a thing to do. everyone was doing it. and then some years into offering e-mail etiquette training we began to notice the people were searching, they were googling e-mail etiquette training without a hyphen. once you remove the-we start to drop down in the search results. so we were, that was language

change that happens because of this-come we ended up removing it from our content, from a ak titled that he wrote about, about it here we ended when building a much more than we would have otherwise and a finiteti capacity. in addition though you and how you know there's language change during our lifetime? because you're having conversations like that with your own family members. and i think it's so interesting and kind of marvels that you have this tension. it's not necessarily a bad thing. it doesn't have to be viewed as a problem. you have younger people being innovative with language and doing things that you didn't do. you have the older half of the population, i'm 56 so there are things that are weird for me to acquire at this point, but they are holding onto certain things and you are in the middle. you're in the optimal position frankly. you should relish it for now,

yeah. but i forgot, the preposition. i was taught in school don't end with prepositions. the reality is if you went around recording us throughout our lives you would pl wite in the with prepositions a lot. for example, if your talk different i think it's highly unlikely unless you are an unusual person to say something like that is the book about which i was telling you. i would say that's the book i was telling you about. english allows for it and frustration on that really i think came from an incomplete understanding of and data structures of english what is capable of doing. it's not a romance language. it can, in fact, have stuff move around. from a stylistic point of view i wouldn't write the sentence sncf kind of published. that is the book i read the first half of, you know, like a certain things that sound awkward but doesn't that's the book is telling about sound very natural next do we have any people who want to insist on that is a book on which is

telling you? you seriously your dinner invitations with decline rapidly. [laughing] >> thank you. >> she brought up an excellent point because english for whatever historical accident at the fence probably the most jews language in the world. so as we go back and forth and the language absorbs new words new thoughts and that can we come down to the bedrock of grammar. so is grammar, how does ground the ball, not the language but the grammar rules, and in this huge global society who sets of those rules anymore, or is there anyone who does set those rules? >> english really is the wild, wildad west. when had a french question a few years, maybe it's more than a few years ago now, i actually wrote an e-mail to the french academy to ask them for advice about what i should be doing in french. they willk be back and told her

what i should do. but i but i wasn't entirelyi wanted to do it because when i started interrogating the french speakers about their habits it, oh, we should have a discussion. this is my husband high school french teacher writer so we could have whole discussion about this. i'm going to send you that e-mail. but you know, whatever a body or single person says about language, people are doing their own thing out there in the world. the grammar education that i got when i was a child did sort of i would say that it assumed a monolithic approach to language. i think t was more sophisticated than that and i think this idea of possibility in literature and variety and sentence structure and all kinds of punctuation i think of something that was conveyed to me. but -- i've lost my train of

thought. >> the french academy being the -- >> right.ge so english -- that's why speedy oxford is no longer the repository. >> that's why come up with a table i actually bring these books here. these are not my books. this is but but i bring up s use that people often as to what your favorite usage guide. i may have my preferences but a really prefer to bring up multiple ones and consult multiple ones. i like yourew different points f view. the might be a a more conserve voice on one in and then a more like a hip more in the fate, like more attuned to language change and it was on the other end. i like seeing what people think. i think it's a beautiful adventure that you can be different writers and that don't handle the same communication problem the same way. to me that is a thing of wonder and inspiration.

if you've read older literature, if you read things from the 18th century or 19th-century or maybe you're reading much older things, they look really different. the punctuation look different. even the spacing after periods which is a hot topic at the grammar table. how often looked different. so there's one more thing that connected to what you mention that a a think is important. there tends to be a privileging of one english style, certain english dialects over others. as thehe years have gone by that is problematic has become more apparent to me. so i really tried in my role at the grammar table to learn about the specific traits of other dialects here and i may even during the pandemic have resorted to watch you really terrible reality shows to learn more and more v about varietiesf slang, but maybe not. i i just can't, i can't be sure. >> thank you.

>> i have twoke questions. we talked earlier today. >> i remember a you. >> good. however, i have two questions. one is the concept of passive voice which i do with a lot and have to do with attorneys because i never understand what they're writing because it is so convoluted that by the end of the paragraph. is this a contract, his is not a contract or whatever? that's one thing. the other thing is there software out there called graham early that people use and use it, to whenst a do certain thins just to check what i'm writing. what is your thoughts on some of these tools that areto out there for people who write especially in business or legal or just for fun to makee sure that your grammar is correct? the first one is passive voice. >> i have thoughts on everything. >> i'm sure youor do.

>> or a lease on these things. passive voiceth i'm guessing the number of you in school were really taught don't use passive voice. some of you may have had him or he may remember a more subtle version don't overuse passive voice which i think is the correct stance because there are reasons to usear passive voice. there are definitely many, many reasons to avoid overusing it against any of you have worked in the business or any kind of organization within the kind of hierarchy and bureaucracy he may have encountered a lot of passive voice. there's just way too much, and i see it a lot. i teach business writing classes. i see it a lot in report writing in particular. people end up with things like it has been noted, it was observed, and is just, they are contorting themselves to try to come up with new ways to phrase things. i think one ofof the best tricks of an experienced writer is knowing how to eliminate those pretty quickly through a variety of strategies. it's not a simple fix but

there's a set of strategies i use to stay away from it. .. filled with regret right at this moment that i don't have. i have to make a note to myself. comedic example of passive voice, but it's used for humor you see that sometimes just in online posts you see people posting that are funny with passive voice. and also if the people posting funny things with passive voice. if the agent of action is unknown you might use passive voice, but i use it. and i once had somebody say give you a passive voice on your website, and i said i know. going overboard is a problem. here is a quiz for you, you did not know there would be a grammar quiz. you will not be graded and not detention, but i'll give you three examples. i think that people

misunderstand what passive voice is and i'll give you three sentences how many are passive voice. all right? i was walking down the street. i was tired. i was bitten by a spider. now, i should say i was bitten by the grammar bug. [laughter] >> how many passive voice sentences did i have there? well, you're a bunch of ringers, forget it. yes, there was only one. i find a lot of adults i work with are told by people they work for that they have passive voice when they really don't have passive voice, people start to look just for the was as though it's the signal. you know what i'm talking about. [laughter] >> so, only the last one he was bitten by the grammar bug, that's the only one. he was talking down the street is just-- can you tell me what that is? that's just, it's just, yeah,

depending -- well, usually in english it's weird. the word is used differently across languages, but in general was walking was past continuous or past progressive. do you remember that from days gone by. i learned past progressive, but in the past, in the middle of the action. the second one he was tired, past actions state of being, and state of exhaustion. and now for grammarly. i am a terrible person and i feel like i have not lived up to the responsibility for grammar table and i turned off any grammar tool in any software, and sometimes they're hidden and sticking the red jagged line under whatever you're doing and makes me nuts. in the case i was last marked as wrong.

i had y-o-u-r instead of you're. and it could in the tell what i did was correct, i think it was operating on probability, make language data base of probabilities and seemed probable i was wrong. people creative in their writing and i'm not saying i'm calling myself creative, but if you're creative in the writing you might see more of the grammar things check marked because you're doing things that aren't standard. i turn it off. there was a nice visitor from grammarly and if i could visit the grammarly offices and i would like to understand better how the tools work. i think they're good for proofreading types of things because you may end up with something in there you just didn't notice like grammarly will alert you to, but you have to use them with such a mental-- you have to have your brain on completely. you can't be the accept, accept, accept kind of person or disaster will ensue just as the case with spell checkers, too. >> thank you, you talked about

comedic and passive voice. down what the philosophical definition of comedy is? >> no. is this my test? >> yes. it's the juxtaposition of opposites. you put two opposite things together. >> i'm going to have to work on that. i'm only funny accidentally. >> yeah, i have two questions. >> okay, i'm going to charge you extra for that one. >> you do that. i bought the book. >> okay. >> i'm going a little crazy and i don't know why this summer it's happened more than ever. i've always used the phrase set foot. >> oh, yeah. >> and i'm hearing people everywhere saying stepped foot and i'm thinking what is this? and just before coming here i was reading lucy foley's the

paris apartment and she said when i stepped foot into the apartment and i thought, wow. this is strange. so, and i looked up several sources, and you know, the oxford dictionary said that usually it should be set foot and, but they said that stepped foot is becoming more popular. >> right. >> so i'm just a little confused about that. >> let me address that first because otherwise i'll forget. i just looked this one up again two weeks ago maybe because it's something that i get asked about. the kind of things -- this is -- that's the kind of thing i don't store in my brain, i'm more after structural kind of person. have you ever found yourself looking up the same thing 50 billion times. that's my life. i feel like that the difference between me and many other people i constantly look up whereas people come up to the

table and ask me so i look again. i read the saying, it's the usual saying where the dominant phrase is set foot. you see this a lot. but another one has taken hold or maybe it co-existed at a lower frequency so, you know, often when you look these things up the co-existing phrase has been in use off and on over the years. i don't remember what the first documented use of stepped foot was. i think people used to set foot, to set foot and i'm guessing a lot of people in this room are set footers not step footers, right? okay. that was really predictable. [laughter] >> and i am, too. but when i think about it, i mean, set-- so you start to look at okay, set foot, that's a little funny, isn't it? how do you use set in other ways, does that seem like such a natural and logical construction and then step foot.

i can see how that can work, too. it feels like it doesn't, but when you scrutinize the, you know, start scrutinizing the habits you're used to they don't have the underlying logic that we think they do because we hear them. i'm going to continue saying set foot and when somebody asks me better to do, set foot because other people will be annoyed at you. in all seriousness for me, as a writer that's where an audience assists you. i don't want people to be mad at me over word choice i don't care about, it's a tiny piece of the writing. so i do avoid certain things that i think will bother people. i do, however, although many people in the united states think you can't begin a sentence with because. i'm going to keep beginning sentences with because when i want to because there's nothing wrong with it and i don't care. there are things i'll be stubborn about and things i won't.

what was your second question. >> the second question is that in terms of, say, oxford comma and other things, standards are different for certain published works. >> right. >> or newspapers versus books, so there are different rules for you know, different areasments you said the oxford comma. >> yeah. >> yeah, i didn't mention earlier that that is the number one question i get, the thing that i get asked about. it's not two times the next most common or three. it's like five or six times the second most common question i get asked about and just in case you don't remember the term oxford comma, before the and, or an or, and that doesn't come up with that. people obsessed with oxford comma, they ignore or.

it's conjunction item one, item two, item three and/or item four, however many items you have. for me it's not an important grammar point. and when i was working as a free-lance reporter and press style, that is-- of course, that's one of the books i have here on my desk, the associate press style. i bring that out a lot. when people use it, they really get used to it. so it's not like they dip in and out of it. journalists who have used this for years really stopped liking the oxford comma. people who follow the chicago manual of style, which is-- see these books are so heavy which is why i had to have a grammar table cart, you can't see it, but there are practical weight considerations with this. but this one recommends using it so it's the clash of the style guides and the context, a lot of newspaper reporting just doesn't have it unless it's

necessary. no, that's not even true. there are a lot of newspapers that just never use it. the copy editors are excising them left and right and even when the list is complicated and you cannot tell where the boundaries are, in which case associate press style, even associated press style says go with the oxford comma then because they're in favor of clarity. so it's not such a -- that's the thing, people iron out the subtleties of the things they learn in school and often forget about-- or in the book and they forget the special cases and the exceptions and the complexity and just remember, i can't begin with because when it's really, you can't begin with because if you end off the dependent clauses over -- of course, that would be because it was raining period. generally kids are not taught to do that because it's not a complete sentence. because it was raining, i sat inside and ate a whole chocolate cake, that's a great

sentence. but the oxford comma thing is fascinating to me. i think partly the fact it has the name with a capital letter makes it appealing to talk about. i don't know if you've been online dating sites, it comes up in people's profiles, oxford comma or bust, things like that. it can be the basis of a future marriage or end of a relationship right there. it's very central in people's lives and i think we get used to a little detail and it's hard when that little detail isn't there or when we don't want it there and it shows up. the most evil punctuation thing you can do it go into your colleague's documents late at night when they're not at work and start adding or removing them when you're not looking that's the way to get everyone to hate you. [laughter] >> i think you had a question before, right? >> a comment. >> okay. but with the -- like the oxford

comma, i had a professor once who insisted do not do that calm comma and sometimes you have a compound phrase with an and in it, and you need that comma. >> absolutely, or like spaghetti and meet peat balls. and i ordered spaghetti, salad and soda. and i could do without the oxford comma, whatever my mood calls for. i would put it, but whatever. whatever your mood calls for and soda. but if i ordered salad, spaghetti and meatballs and soda, and i would put a comma in there and because i have an and there and makes it more readable. it's the idea of consistency, you know, too much consistency can get in the way of clarity and creativity. okay. what else? >> and you're saying you turn

off the grammar checks when you're working. yeah, they drive me crazy and sometimes they are actually wrong. >> that's why i turn them off. >> and some of the examples and i tell me it's just as good as the college kid with the computer science degree who wrote the software program, you know? so they're really wrong sometimes. >> the people who wrote the most beautiful books sitening this shop are not the constructer of the grammar rules for that typically. so it's not the -- the art of language is not embedded in the advice there. >> i'd like to know who came up with calebri-11. i change that. and who came up with that? it wasn't a standard before we had microsoft. >> i think you might be more font sensitive than i am. >> anyway, anyway, i was interested in the way you talked about english being the wild west because, of course, language just evolves. language just keeps evolving

and grammar rules were begun to be written long after language was developed, way into progress. >> it had been galloping along without grammar books. >> in some way-- >> what a great innovation, right? [laughter] >> i think if i remember directly, i think around 12th century or so, france, there was a -- this is getting really super nerd grammar history, excellent. >> so those were written partly to teach the language, latin language, especially, but then it became a way of holding back the language evolving, right. >> if you were saying something else that was going on, you weren't informing to the so-called grammar rules at that point. so grammar rules became a way of kind of holding back the evolution of language. >> there's always going to be a tension between what people want to do to bust through

things that they were taught they should do and, okay, and i've got to end that sentence. let me start again. i think that a lot of the grammar books i grew up with were -- contained some opinions that had been -- that were presented as though they were factual edicts, you know, that they had the certainty of truth and also practice behind them and you know, i think if people writing style guides, 100, 150 years ago had the benefit of computer data bases could have checked that they were saying should never do, and was being done by the pro stylists of their time and limited in their heads from their own reading and that's subjective. you forget, you forget what you read and you can't read everything, so a lot of the material that we work with now is more extensive and it's more

scientific. i don't think it always, you know, when you look at large data bases of language use, that doesn't always tell you maybe the most elegant way that will impress upon the reading the idea that you want artistic fashion, but i certainly have benefitted from statistical analyses that i did not have access to when i was younger. >> so, if i'm-- just one last thing, if i'm looking for the way a language is going, i listen to how people are talking. >> right. that's where language is going. >> absolutely. i like your modern grammarian stance. i approve that message. >> 15 years and noticed on standardized test for children, they're capitalizing sun, moon and earth and i did question, because they said it's our sun, our moon, our earth now when

you go to type it it automatically capitalizes it, you have to go in and change it to keep a small "s". >> right. is that the reason because it's our sun, our moon, our earth? why do you have to capitalize it? >> something that's come up for me because i, too, had the impression you did that i was supposed to keep those lower case. >> yes. >> and do others of have that experience as well? have you been capitalizing earth-- you lower case. >> yeah, so that's the kind of thing i normally have to look up because i don't -- i capitalize earth now because i think i realized i was supposed to. i did not know that applied to the sun and the moon though. >> i was shocked. it was in a-- . where do you see it? >> i saw it in the national exam given to fourth graders. >> was the test actually about the capitalization.

>> no, it was a question and it -- i didn't feel, when someone told me the planets, but the question really wasn't about the planets. it said something, you know, was a question and through this paragraph it had capital sun. and i went wait a minute, and then capital moon and that's when i went running back to the english teachers in school. >> i feel as though children's books i read, those of you who have read children's books in recent years to your kids or grandkids is the sun capitalized in there? i don't think it is, right? is it? >> i don't know, but capitalize-- (inaudible) >> and i think that's the argument. let us take a look. i just happen to have a handy dictionary with me because this is how i roll. i've been asked why, you know, why not just use your phone, isn't that faster? but then people think i'm looking at things on my phone and i want to look like a person who actually you would

want to have a conversation with. so if i look up sun here, i'll get there eventually. let's see, does it tell us what-- so sun often capitalized and that's how it leaves it. i would have to read in more detail to see. do we have any copy editors who work regularly with that language? yeah, so i suspect it's not consistent. that would be my guess and i would have to check in the details, but people do often capitalize seasons which i've never done and i continue not to do. so that one i will stand behind. and generally i'm opposed to excessive capitalization to make things look more important and i'm betting quite a few of you are, too. was another. >> good night moon--

(inaudible) >> those are old, old, old stories. >> yeah. >> question. this will be the last question back here. >> oh. >> okay. i can hang out. i can hang out. >> i love grammar table because it's so low tech. i was curious-- >> i take that as a compliment, by the way. >> you talked about its debut and i was curious what inspired you to go out on the sidewalk? did you have a goal or what were you trying to accomplish? >> i often wear a t-shirt that says grammar hedonist. you know, i really am motivated. i think one thing i can say has been true about me throughout my life is that i have a good sense of what makes me happy. like that, i can tell and i don't like to do things that make me unhappy for very long and i know that grammar makes me happy and i know that talking to people makes me

happy and one of the miracles of the modern age has been the internet's ability to connect us across geographic, you know, great -- great distances, so i was using the internet heavily from starting around 2009 when i first discovered social media to network with other language geeks all over the world. and i ended up in large language groups debating, case and such and such a language and i ended up, i mean, it was wonderful because it gave me access to people who had similar interestsment i loved it, i completely nerded out for years and studying different languages and there was a large group called polyglots on facebook and i went crazy there. and i was spending a lot of time online and that's not a formula for happiness, for me or for many people and i was thinking a lot about the polarization in our country and how it seemed to be amplified by the antipathy flowed freely

on twitter and facebook and it made me sad. i think it's really important to keep human contact with other people. so, grammar is my natural focus, but it has -- the table itself, my low tech table has a much bigger purpose for me and that's to keep reminding myself and the people who visit it that language is full of surprises. people are full of surprises, the street corner is full of surprises maybe you didn't-- maybe you expected the garbage can there. you know, there's a grammar table and i think that that is -- for me, conversation with other human beings in the same room is very important foundation of democracy and life satisfaction. >> thank you. [applause] ♪♪

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