Are you wondering if you’re wondering or are you actually wondering?

Are you seeing this in print or just hearing it? If it’s in print, that’s a new one on me. I have very rarely seen that type of error written out.

If it’s just in speech, I tend to attribute it to an (American) socialization process that overwhelmingly teaches women to phrase their statements as questions and to inject tentativeness at all times.

I guess if you’re seeing a request like this on a listserv or something, similar social dynamics could be at work. People are remarkably uncomfortable making a direct request, and particularly when they feel like a lower-status person requesting something from those with more status. No matter how small or simple a statement is, some people will phrase it tentatively because they’re afraid of getting slapped down.

I’m not sure why you’re bothered by this particular peccadillo. Sure, the usage is wrong, but I doubt that you’re ever actually left wondering whether the speaker is really wondering about wondering. “I wonder if _____” is an indirect question. Indirect questions do not use question marks, but their meaning is fairly clear even if someone accidentally does use one.

In some languages, it is actually fairly common for an indirect question to be punctuated as a direct question. Speakers of those languages don’t seem to have much trouble with the concept.

Shrug.

I wonder if you would be interested in writing a post about some other common mistakes. Two that bother me are: 1)Using “I,” “he” or “she” where the object (“me,” “him,” or “her”) is correct. Example: “My neighbor invited my friend and I [sic] to dinner.” 2)Using a singular subject and a plural verb (or vice versa). Example: “The root cause of our economic problems are [sic] overpaid executives.”

I should add that this is an informal, conversational thing, not something I would do in formal writing.

That was a terrible post.

Well i’m glad Salient mentioned it, because aren’t you all just a bunch of wankers.

One of my pet peeves is when people put question marks at the end of sentences beginning with “I wonder if”. I’m always left wondering if the person is wondering about whether they’re wondering. (Of course, chances are they are not, but why the question mark then?) This is an incredibly common mistake for reasons not clear to me.

Well thanks. Now I’ll always read it that way too.

Hmm. I find “I wonder if” unattractive at best, question mark or not. “If” implies a “then;” “whether” implies an “or.”

In “I’m wondering [if/ whether] people could improve their grammar,” I see an implied “or not;” I don’t see any implied “then.” So “if” seems improper to me.

You’re wrong. Using the word “if” to introduce an indirect question is 100% proper English. Look it up in the dictionary, or in an English grammar.

Or, um, what Salient said.

I wonder whether the common use of “me” in a compound subject might not be a holdover from Celtic, particularly in the British periphery and the American diaspora. Old tongues there are not forgotten, look away …

The tendency to vocally inflect simple declarative sentences as questions has been noted for decades. The unstated underlying question is “Do you know what I’m talking about?” and the point is to avoid seeming arrogant. “I’m going to see X!” is never inoffensive only if everyone knows what X is. If X is an acquired taste, as is often the case, by inflecting the statement as a question you use the same words but your tone implies “You probably know this, but you’re welcome to ask.”

We’ve got both words and music. The music channel carries additional information.

I’ve heard there is such a thing as non-verbal communication too.

(salient, do you really have that much free time on your hands ?)

I tried to wash it off…

(Of course, I imagine it took me about as much time to think through and type out my comment as it took you to write, say, this. Frequent bloggers who complain about someone wasting their time in a comments thread amuse me.)

in informal communication it’s a feature, not a bug.

It is a bug, for the same reason the spoken inclination is a bug. It connotes a preliminary expression of apology. Do you want people to feel as though they must preface every request with hemming and hawing and indirect deference to hypothetical idle wondering?

Opaque rules that require us all to become linguists just make reading and writing more difficult.

Okay, agreed, but is the difference between questioning and wondering so opaque?

It’s worthwhile to read over the formulations that Eszter recommended as alternatives. In particular, a formulation such as “I wonder: Does X obtain?” connotes a healthy degree of self-confidence even as it opens up an opportunity for discussion and input from others. “I wonder if X obtains?” does not connote the same self-confidence. The introductory prompt and the question slur together; this formulation implies meekness and some lack of self-assurance.

I would like to suggest (again) that what is bothersome about the “I wonder if X?” formulation is that it connotes a lack of self-confidence. It doesn’t matter whether this formulation is spoken or represented in writing; it’s problematic either way.

Where are all the descriptive grammarians? There should be buckets of embittered and disemvoweled ink shed on this thread by now.

It gets kind of old telling people that think they know something about grammar that they’re complaining about something that is completely picayune and not even really incorrect at all. So I’m guessing all the descriptive grammarians are mostly just rolling their eyes, exhaling raggedly and skipping to the next post.

Here’s my favorite speech-to-page failure: “I should of written my essay more carefully. ”

Nothing major or especially grammatically offensive; I believe its just the way the error subtly sneaks up on a language user through speech and then makes its way down to the written word that occurs as both obvious and insidious.

“…should of…” … I believe its just the way the error subtly sneaks up on a language user through speech and then makes its way down to the written word that occurs as both obvious and insidious.

Indeed, that’s the kind of error that I’d bet correlates fairly strongly with not reading very much. I’d hypothesize a person who does not read much will not have encountered the “should have” conjugation frequently enough to absorb it, and is more likely to attempt to spell words phonetically, within the boundaries of familiar written words. Hence “shood uv” would be written “should of” because should and of are the familiar written words that sound phonetically closest to should have. (All of this is hypothetical, mind you.)

One reason for correcting these errors, even if they’re innocuous from the standpoint of strict interpretation-of-what-the-writer-meant, is that these categories of errors mark someone as “uneducated” to those who are familiar with the prescriptively correct conjugation. (…speaking as a teacher now…) If we want to ensure our students have the greatest range of opportunities open to them in this non-ideal world, it’s important to help them avoid the kinds of “marking errors” that might reflect poorly on them and thus limit the availability of satisfying life opportunities.

Descriptivists may read “errors” in the above paragraph as shorthand for “deviation from grammatical norms of the elite class” insofar as they prefer not to misinterpret me.

Oops, I meant Eszter.

It’s entirely possible they’re so insensitive to social context and what words normally mean that they have no idea whatever what they’re literally saying.

I think you mean hypersensitive to social context. The person in question might be so preoccupied with a perceived need to hedge their query, they are ultimately unaware of what they are literally saying.

Also: shucks, I’d like to see the list of factors you’ve compiled. Your statement “the environment is dysfunctional and they’ve developed only semi-functional ways of dealing with it” was especially thought-provoking — regarding what would constitute functionality in an interactive environment, and the role of grammar and communication norms in establishing or undermining that functionality.

seems like the kind of mistake which, if you confronted the transgressor with it, they would say “Oh yes of course that makes no sense!”

If only this were true…

Often, poor grammar to me actually speaks to an innate, spontaneous resourcefulness people have when attempting to communicate

Deviations from formal grammar can be resourceful. Very much so. Or, they can undermine the speaker’s attempt to communicate or to understand others, if only because the conversation partner must spend additional time/effort decoding the statement.

Authors have manipulated deviations from normed grammar for resourceful effect since before the days of formal grammar. This intentional deviation (when successful) is performed with full knowledge of the norm and the range of connotations that norm carries with it. Notice this requires the author to have familiarity with the normed grammar itself, to ensure their deviation is likely to have a desired effect.

Demonstrable unfamiliarity with the norms, however, marks a person. It signifies in particular that the person was unable or unwilling to internalize the norms of grammar. Perhaps they are being resourceful to compensate for their ignorance — resourcefully reinventing the wheel. Since they’re not familiar with how to write the sentence “I should have baked the spaghetti,” they resort to representation of the phonetics in terms of known words. “I should of baked the spageti.”

Witnessing this is rather like watching someone sum up some numbers by making rows of X’s on a paper and then counting them: we might respond, “ingenious approach, sure, but don’t they know how to add?”

Yet saying “I should of baked the spaghetti,” in lieu of “I should have baked the spaghetti,” speaks to a certain conformity, a good faith, a mimicking of the rules of grammar; its where writing takes place this person is found out as a fraud, whether or not they always knew it.

Thus, they were “able” and “willing” to internalize the norms of grammar; the technicality of writing proved to be a troublesome step.

Reminds me when I was a kid, for years I believed the villain from Star Wars was “Dark Vader”. When I realized it was “Darth Vader”, I greatly preferred my own colorful and moreover entirely apt invention of the name.

I mean come on, “Darth”?

salient: C’mon, now. Can I take your interest as an indication you’ll want the novel when it comes out (mine or Eszter’s)?

Eszter raised two questions: Is “I wonder if . . . ?” acceptable in English? Is the person wondering whether they are wondering? I think the first question has been answered already in this thread. As for the second question, my answer is, as I suggested, I don’t know. I don’t know who’s saying that. Is it a peer to his or her peers? Is it an authority figure from a different organization? A woman or a man? What I do know is that Eszter recently began working in New England, and New England conversational patterns have been considered confusing by people in other parts of the country. I’m an outsider myself, so I doubly don’t know.

Any ‘descriptive grammarians’ should try decoding student essays some time. You’ll soon realise that there remain a near-infinity of ways to be just plain nonsensical…

Eszter asserts:

If you agree that there is a point to having an agreed-upon (or at least widely accepted) set of rules then it’s difficult to argue for having question marks at the end of sentences that concern statements not questions.

This is not true at all. The point of having an agreed-upon set of rules is to ensure communication is as effective as possible. If the opinion of the masses is that question marks should go at the end of a sentence that expresses a question, regardless of the grammatical structure of the sentence, then using the question mark according to these rules is much more effective. Furthermore, given that especially today most of what we write and most of what we read is transient and not intended to be read in twenty years time, there’s absolutely no reason not to allow the rules to update themselves for each generation.

Otherwise, after long enough, you end up with the written language and the spoken language being irreconcilably different. And that helps no-one.

Also, Eszter, your ability to out-do your native-speaking peers wrt “whom” is probably for two reasons: Your native language (Hungarian, I think/assume?) has an accusative case, but English doesn’t (meaning you have an intuition for it but your native-speaking peers don’t); and native speakers aren’t taught this sort of thing in school, but you were. It’s just that some people thought they should insist everyone abide by old-fashioned rules and get people to write “whom”. Now people know they should write “whom” if they’re writing formally, but they don’t know when to use it because English doesn’t use “whom”, and of course they’ll make mistakes.

Also, salient, this isn’t a matter of pre- vs description. I’m as much a prescriptivist as anyone; it’s just that I view my prescriptions as helping communication. I view a sentence like “To whom shall I address this?” as unacceptable in most contexts, because it conveys more information than it should (the social status of the speaker, excessively, and perhaps their opinion of the audience, rudely) and because it hinders communication by requiring people to use structures that effectively aren’t a part of the language. It would also reduce the number of these metadiscussions if everyone just used “Who’ll/Who will/Who should I address this to?”, and these discussions don’t really help the question of addressing letters, so they’re awfully inefficient.

Another point – Formal usage and internet usage are different. Formal usage uses punctuation to indicate grammatical structure. Whether we use a question mark or not depends on whether the sentence has the formal structure of a question – not on whether it’s eliciting information, and not whether, in speech, the speaker would use the intonation associated with a question. “Are you crazy?” takes a question mark, but it doesn’t seek any information and it wouldn’t be spoken as a question.

In speech, putting aside the Valley Girl phenomenon, we tend to use a rising intonation when we seek information or are asking for an accomodation, regardless of whether a statement is grammatically in the form of a question. Try it. “The train to Baltimore is at 3:40?” Seeking information. “The train to Baltimore is at 3:40.” Not seeking information. “I wonder if you’d wait just a minute while I get my jacket?” Asking, politely. “I wonder if you’d wait just a minute while I get my jacket.” Demanding, rudely.

In a significant departure from formal writing, writing in emails and text messages typically mimics speech, even if doing so means rejecting the conventions of formal writing. Much internet writing is intended to be read as if it were spoken. Writing that adheres to traditional rules – for example, this comment – comes across as stiff, pedantic, and old-fashioned.

So punctuation in internet writing conveys tone, rather than grammatical structure, and is therefore often “incorrect” as a matter of traditional rules but perfectly correct within the emerging conventions of internet writing.

I did, however, learn German from a text book and there the accusative case is quite obvious (at least to those who learn it from a text book:).

I would loosely hypothesize that folks who learn an additional language through text or study are likely to pay closer attention to, and hew closer to, the formal grammatical structure not only of that language, but of all languages they speak/read/write. My only “evidence” for this is unreliably anecdotal; I had this experience when beginning to learn French, which required me to pay close attention to conjugation and communication patterns generally.

I would suggest, “May I take a moment to get my jacket?”

Salient, if a person says any variant — yours, mine, whatever – with a down intonation – the person is being rude or hostile. And any variant uttered in an up intonation is polite.

Eszter – my point is that punctuation in brief internet communications – tweets, emails, text messages – is not the same as punctuation in formal writing. It’s like criticizing someone for not wearing a jacket and tie when dining out at McDonald’s. There are proper manners for eating at a McDonald’s, but jacket and tie aren’t expected.

To those who defend “This is X?” as a structure for questions, or who see every deviation from current norms as “evolution” implying an intentional and purposeful flouting of a known grammatical norm: Would you please read my comments #50 and #35 respectively, and say whether or not they address your concerns? Thanks.

English has a syntax for questions that is distinct from the syntax for declarative statements, and I’ve put some effort into defending why we ought to advocate for maintenance of that syntactical distinction. From those with the time and the inclination to respond, I’d appreciate hearing why this particular grammatical distinction is unworthy of advocacy and/or should not be maintained.

Salient writes:

I feel as though you’re responding extensively to something I didn’t say and not responding to what I did say.

I could say the same thing! I don’t understand the flow of your post. You might consider pointing out who you’re replying to.

It is possible you don’t understand what a descriptivist is. Are you trying to describe me as a descriptivist? I am happy to describe language, but I do believe that there are certain rules we should abide by in order to communicate effectively, and I think one is to avoid sentences like “to whom shall I address this?” which are considered acceptable by descriptivists and recommended by traditionalist prescriptivists. But this is not a huge matter, and I would hardly consider one short paragraph to be “extensively”, so I don’t know where that’s come from.

Considering your post 35, it doesn’t come close to addressing my concerns. You seem to think the point of rules of grammar are to prove you can pass some silly initiation test. I would prefer the people talking/writing for me spent their time making sure they knew what they were saying and tried to communicate it effectively, using whatever means are at their disposal, rather than ensuring that every question they wrote obeyed particular structural rules. A proofread is useful, but trying to avoid sentence-final prepositions buys you nothing.

Concerning your 50, it seems to be bogged down in specific examples. I will note that, unlike Eszter, you seem to be making particular requirements of colloquial conversation, which is somewhere in between “impossible to achieve” and “a waste of time”. I’m not sure of the broader point; you seem to be defending traditional rules themselves and criticising a particular idiom, rather than the idea of adhering to traditional rules. English is full of pointless idioms so I don’t think you have a point there, and although some traditional rules are worth adhering too, others are unhelpful to effective communication. This is independent of whether they’re traditional rules.

Nothing you’ve said comes anywhere close to trying to convince me that the point of rules of grammar is to help make communication effective.

Are you trying to describe me as a descriptivist?

No. I don’t know who you are. All I know is that you posted this paragraph to me, rather out of the blue:

Also, salient, this isn’t a matter of pre- vs description. I’m as much a prescriptivist as anyone; it’s just that I view my prescriptions as helping communication. I view a sentence like “To whom shall I address this?” as unacceptable in most contexts, because it conveys more information than it should (the social status of the speaker, excessively, and perhaps their opinion of the audience, rudely) and because it hinders communication by requiring people to use structures that effectively aren’t a part of the language. It would also reduce the number of these metadiscussions if everyone just used “Who’ll/Who will/Who should I address this to?”, and these discussions don’t really help the question of addressing letters, so they’re awfully inefficient.

I didn’t know (and still don’t know) how to respond to it. In particular, I’m not sure why this paragraph was addressed to me. I thought your point in that paragraph completely agreed with my comment #23. What did I say, in comments 1 through 44, that you’re disagreeing with and correcting? That’s been (admittedly) nagging at me all day.

Anyhow, we’re talking past each other. I suspect this is, in part, because I’m implicitly approaching this from an education-theory perspective: what should we teach, what grammar should we prioritize or advocate when teaching, and why? …whereas I think you’re explicitly approaching this from an everyday-interaction perspective: what should we get or not get actively peeved about when we encounter it in casual experiences?

Obviously, I’m not answering the second question. I think you’re not answering the first question. Therefore, confusion on both sides. :)

To sum up: I think talking about what ought to be true about perscriptive grammar is inherently talking about education: what grammatical structures and rules do we advocate, as teachers (or as people who comment on what ought to be taught).

I don’t have anything further to contribute. Have a good weekend.

Ezster, technically, your opening sentence is wrong as well. The correct form would be:
“I wonder whether people could improve their grammar”. Moreover, you don’t have a statement, but an indirect question, after the introductory “I wonder whether”. The reason you don’t have a question mark is because the question is indirect, not because you are punctuating a statement. Also, I am afraid that your concluding examples are direct questions, not simply “questions”, which is why they have a question mark. Overall, it might be a good idea to investigate direct versus indirect questions, rather than confusing the issue by making it one of statement versus question, which simply obscures the issue.

It all comes of killing off your subjunctive.

Bad move, English language.

It’s unfortunate that so many commenters on this thread assume that attempting to be linguistically correct is a matter of insecurity. Indeed, one might wonder whether they make such claims as a way of making their linguistic ignorance seem more acceptable. There is an important distinction between making an error in good faith and claiming that an error is somehow better, despite knowing that it is an error.

To go back to the matter of using “I” where “me” is correct (see my comment @5 and rm’s comment @16):
This may often be a matter of ‘hypercorrectness,’ as rm says. What bothers — or perhaps I should say what interests — me, however, is that the incorrect use of the phrase “so-and-so and I” seems to indicate a lack of an intuitive grasp of the structure of English. You wouldn’t say “the boss invited I to dinner,” so why would you say “The boss invited my wife and I to dinner”? It indicates to me, to repeat myself, a lack of an intuitive grasp of the language. I’m not a grammarian or a linguist or anything like that, so maybe someone is going to tell me that the notion of an intuitive grasp of the language is incoherent or that there is no such thing. It seems to me, however, that for native speakers (or for those who did not learn the language from a textbook) there is.
For example, I like French, but I’m probably never going to have an intuitive grasp of French, because I learned it (imperfectly and partially) in school, and now, when I find myself much later trying to re-learn it (esp. from the conversational angle), relatively little about French seems intuitive to me (some parts do, but a lot doesn’t). But because I’ve been surrounded by English since the day I was born, a lot of it feels intuitive to me, and “the boss invited my wife and I to dinner” seems intuitively (not just formally) wrong. However, a lot of educated native English speakers apparently don’t share this intuition, because if they did, they wouldn’t say it, ‘hypercorrectness’ or no.

Language is not mathematics. There is no standard for “correctness” other than comprehension. Punctuation, especially, is not some immutable facet of human language; rather, it is relatively recent, evolves rapidly, and is more closely related to the practical concerns of the typographer than to grammar.

A non-native speaker criticizing the supposed ubiquitous “errors” of native speakers is deeply misguided.

Bloix @68 — Thanks. Interesting.

It’s unfortunate that so many commenters on this thread assume that attempting to be linguistically correct is a matter of insecurity.

I don’t see many comments to that effect. Let me agree that linguistic correctness, i.e. an attempt to use the rules of formal grammar when communicating, has nothing to do with insecurity. I would loosely hypothesize that “attempting to be linguistically correct” usually corresponds pretty well to “being sensibly cautious about communicating in an appreciable way that will be understood.”

I would suggest that certain specific quirks or deviations from communicative norms, such as inordinate hedging, suggest or connote a degree of personal insecurity. I believe this is one good reason to encourage people (within the constraints of social propriety and common sense, of course!) to adopt grammatical norms that help promote preferable characteristics, like comfortable expression of self-assurance.