OUR FORTNIGHTLY extract from Gwynne’s Grammar, the guide to old school grammar so hated by modern linguists. Today Mr Gwynne discusses the gerund and the thorny problem of what to do when traditionally correct grammar sounds awkward

THE GERUND IS a verbal noun; that is to say, the gerund is in one respect a verb and in another respect a noun.

i) As a noun it can be the subject or complement in a clause (as in “Seeing is believing”); and it can be the object in a clause, as in “They like learning”; and it can be governed by a preposition (as in “You are good at learning”).

ii) As a verb it can be in the present active (“seeing is believing”) or in the past active (as in “Having learnt grammar is something to be proud of”) or in the present passive or past passive (as in “Being taught grammar is not the same thing as having been taught it”).

When the doing verb is transitive, the gerund normally needs an object, exactly as the many finite forms of the verb do (as in the last example in the last sentence). But note that it can be turned into a “pure noun” by using the preposition “of” to govern what would have been the object (as in “we relish the learning of grammar” instead of “We relish learning grammar”).

One other piece of information about gerunds is worth noting, if only because it is the cause of so many people learning incorrect grammar in relation to it. Because the gerund is a noun, it must be preceded by a possessive adjective (“my”, “your”, “his” etc.,) rather than by a personal pronoun (such as “me”, “you” and “him”). Thus for instance, “Are you happy with the idea of my teaching you grammar?” is correct, “Are you happy with the idea of me teaching you grammar?”, which most people would write today would say and write, is incorrect.

Did you, dear reader, spot the error in that paragraph? I hope you did (though I bet you did not!), because I actually broke the rule that I was explaining in the very paragraph in which I was explaining it. The clause, “… if only because it is the cause of so many people using incorrect grammar in relation to it”, should of course read: “if only because it is the cause of so many people’s using incorrect grammar…” Some grammarians, probably most today, would say that adding the correct grammar there would have the effect of making the sentence clumsy, making readers pause in order to try to work out what is doing there, and perhaps, with many readers, even to conclude that it is there by mistake; that there are times when grammar rules can be legitimately broken and this is one of them. While granting the problem, I deny that solution, which, after all, is completely unnecessary. In my submission, the problem is better solved simply by rewording the rest of the clause, for instance to: “… if only because it causes so many people to use…” or “if only because it is the reason that so many people use…”

The above is an extract from Gwynne’s Grammar (Ebury Press).

We are collecting entries for this year’s Bad Grammar Award. The award is given to a palpable use of bad English by a person or organisation who should know better. Previous winners include a group of education professionals and Tesco.

Our next grammar tip will be posted on Wednesday 25th February.