The big-haired US popular academic Steven Pinker has just published his incredibly boring “scientific” style guide. In an astonishing piece of propaganda disguised as literary advice, the first bit of writing he quotes, as the ultimate example of good prose, is from Richard Dawkins. He has the whole of English and American literature to choose from and he selects a passage from that raving egomaniac! Anyway, the book is full of the tired old academic linguistic nonsense about how grammar doesn’t matter, all written in the most exquisitely crafted language. Pinker is one of those who says it’s OK to use a split infinitive and then scrupulously avoids them himself. Patronising in the extreme!

At the Idler we prefer old school teaching to ivory tower nit-picking, and that is why we are going to run extracts from Gwynne’s Grammar, the traditional primer.

First, we are going to learn the definitions of the parts of speech. You should sit down and get these off by heart, word for word. Medieval schoolchildren would chant then until they had them by memory. Repetition: a much-derided but very effective educational technique.

Here we go:

1. A noun is the name of a person, place or thing.

2. A pronoun is a word which stands in place of a noun. It is used to avoid clumsy, sometimes very clumsy, repetition. The word comes from the Latin “pro” meaning “for” or “on behalf of” and “nomen” for name.

3. An adjective is a word which describes a noun or a pronoun.

4. A verb is a doing or being word.

5. An adverb is a word which modifies a verb, an adjective or another adverb.

6. A conjunction is a word which joins together any two words of the same part of speech, or any two phrases, or clauses, or even sentences.

7. A preposition is a word which governs a noun or a pronoun and connects it to anything else in the sentence.

8. An interjection — the only part of speech of which animals are capable! — is an exclamation.

From Gwynne’s Grammar (Ebury), hardback, £8.99