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Invitation: let's all be grammar Nazis. Find grammatical mistakes in JKR!
I think the people who disapprove of JKR's style simply have no notion of what good writing is about. JKR - I will defend this statement in an essay if I have to - has a gift for putting in just as much detail as is strictly necessary to create a setting and move the story along, and her narrative rhythm is unimproveable.
However, there is one serious problem with her writing: her grammar is only moderate. I was re-reading Philosopher's stone when the following sentence leapt at me and tried to bite a chunk out of my nose: Harry had never believed he would meet a boy he hated more than Dudley, but that was before he met Draco Malfoy. Can't see it? How about: Harry had never believed he would meet a boy he would hate more than Dudley, but that was before he met Draco Malfoy? Or, better still, Harry had never believed he would meet a boy more hateful than Dudley, but that was before he met Draco Malfoy?
You see then, that the sequence of tenses in the sentence is wrong. A definite tense, such as that past tense, cannot follow a subjunctive. It's obvious: you cannot state as fact ("hated", in the past) something that depends on a hypothesis ("believed he would meet"). Like most good grammar, this depends on logic. What is more, it is bad style; too many past tenses dangling from successive clauses - had, hated, met. The sentence is effective as a stage-setting, looking both back to the horrors of the first chapter and to the unpleasant meetings already described with Draco, and carries its own nice mini-climax in the closing clause, but that was before..., with delicate but audible irony. It shows the quality of JKR as a writer, but is hurt by a silly and unnecessary mistake.
I am also certain that I read, in Order of the Phoenix, a sentence which used the dialectal English form he was sat instead of the correct he was sitting, but I am not sure where it is.
So I would like to have an open invitation - a competition, if you will, though there are no prizes. Can someone else find me genuine grammatical errors of this kind in JKR's prose? Bear in mind that grammar is not usage; a sentence may be strange in terms of normal usage, but grammatically correct. Grammar is the strong underpinning of rules in the language. And, incidentally, contrary to common superstition, the split infinitive is not ungrammatical in English, and any post pointing one out will be deleted.
Otherwise, I welcome anyone who has anything to point out; and that includes lurkers and people who are otherwise banned from commenting here. Happy hunting, everyone!
However, there is one serious problem with her writing: her grammar is only moderate. I was re-reading Philosopher's stone when the following sentence leapt at me and tried to bite a chunk out of my nose: Harry had never believed he would meet a boy he hated more than Dudley, but that was before he met Draco Malfoy. Can't see it? How about: Harry had never believed he would meet a boy he would hate more than Dudley, but that was before he met Draco Malfoy? Or, better still, Harry had never believed he would meet a boy more hateful than Dudley, but that was before he met Draco Malfoy?
You see then, that the sequence of tenses in the sentence is wrong. A definite tense, such as that past tense, cannot follow a subjunctive. It's obvious: you cannot state as fact ("hated", in the past) something that depends on a hypothesis ("believed he would meet"). Like most good grammar, this depends on logic. What is more, it is bad style; too many past tenses dangling from successive clauses - had, hated, met. The sentence is effective as a stage-setting, looking both back to the horrors of the first chapter and to the unpleasant meetings already described with Draco, and carries its own nice mini-climax in the closing clause, but that was before..., with delicate but audible irony. It shows the quality of JKR as a writer, but is hurt by a silly and unnecessary mistake.
I am also certain that I read, in Order of the Phoenix, a sentence which used the dialectal English form he was sat instead of the correct he was sitting, but I am not sure where it is.
So I would like to have an open invitation - a competition, if you will, though there are no prizes. Can someone else find me genuine grammatical errors of this kind in JKR's prose? Bear in mind that grammar is not usage; a sentence may be strange in terms of normal usage, but grammatically correct. Grammar is the strong underpinning of rules in the language. And, incidentally, contrary to common superstition, the split infinitive is not ungrammatical in English, and any post pointing one out will be deleted.
Otherwise, I welcome anyone who has anything to point out; and that includes lurkers and people who are otherwise banned from commenting here. Happy hunting, everyone!
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I disagree, though, that grammar has much to do with logic. (At least, the standard definition of "grammar," which is "the rules by which the corpus of possible utterances in a language can be generated.") For example, many English-speakers believe using a double negative for emphasis or to express a positive is "illogical," but (as you obviously know!) speakers of Romance languages use such constructions all the time, and find nothing illogical about them. (Nor should they)