--- description: In the first in a series of columns taking a caustic look at modern mores, our writer considers how Weird Al's No. 1 album has revived a debate on the proper use of language title: How Weird Al's 'Word Crimes' Is Saving Grammar for the Future image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt97b4be9737f9c836/69869e0ae8524b7054604221/screen-shot-2014-07-31-at-3-36-47-pm.png?branch=production&width=3840&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 ---  * [Entertainment](/section/entertainment/) ## Entertainment Update your preferences in [Account Settings](/account/preferences/) Close # How Weird Al's 'Word Crimes' Is Saving Grammar for the Future by [Richard Corliss](/author/richard-corliss/) ## Richard Corliss Update your preferences in [Account Settings](/account/preferences/) Close Aug 1, 2014 1:29 PM CUT  RCA Records by [Richard Corliss](/author/richard-corliss/) ## Richard Corliss Update your preferences in [Account Settings](/account/preferences/) Close Aug 1, 2014 1:29 PM CUT The plaque commemorating pitcher Greg Maddux’s induction into the Baseball Hall of Fame this week testifies that he is the “only hurler with 300 wins, 3,000 strikeouts and less than 1,000 walks.” If you winced, or for that matter hurled, at the [use of _less_ instead of _fewer_](http://hardballtalk.nbcsports.com/2014/07/28/word-crimes-the-hall-of-fame-arguably-made-a-grammatical-error-on-greg-madduxs-plaque/ "undefined"), you may be a careful reader, a grammar snob — or Weird Al Yankovic. At 56, after nearly 40 years of musical burlesques, the accordion-grinding pop satirist has scored his first top-of-the-pops CD with the album _Mandatory Fun_. It’s (not _its_) the first comedy album to reach No. 1 since 1963, when Allan Sherman’s _My Son, the Nut_ reigned on the _Billboard_ charts, propelled by its (not _it’s_) hit single [“Hello Muddah, Hello Faddah”](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9jjiWS%5F%5FMp0 "undefined") (insert commas). The Yankovic number that has attracted more than (not _over_) 12 million listens on YouTube — and which (not _that_) everyone is sending to his or her (never _their_) friends — is “Word Crimes,” a “Blurred Lines” parody that (not _which_) itemizes crimes against the language. English teachers, on realizing that Weird Al has become the arbiter for proper grammar, may figuratively (not _literally_) look for the nearest bridge to jump off. And yes, it’s O.K. to end a sentence with a preposition, and to use the word _O.K._ **(WATCH:** [**Weird Al Yankovic’s “Word Crimes” video**](http://time.com/2988041/let-weird-al-teach-you-about-grammar-in-his-new-blurred-lines-parody/ "undefined")**)** Aside from dry-cleaning the smut from last summer’s Robin Thicke–Pharrell Williams smash, “Word Crimes” serves as an instant anthem for any language maven (Hebrew for expert) or _alter kocker_ (senior citizen, from the Yiddish for old poop) who has mourned the slippage of good grammar over the years, especially with the rise of social media. (And aren’t all media social?). In 1990, if you had told Weird Al that young people would soon be communicating as much by writing as by telephoning, he might have dared hope that the return of literacy would wipe out a generation of slang mumblings: “I mean, like, you know?” Texting has reduced the number of waste words, but it has also exposed a black hole of ignorance about traditional — what a cranky guy would call correct — grammar. Or maybe the texters could care less, which for Yankovic is another word crime: “That means you do care/ At least a little.” The texters might explain gently to Al, as to a grandparent from the old country, that “I could care less” is an example of irony; and Al would snap back, “Irony is not coincidence.” The exact meaning of irony is so narrow that the word is hardly worth using; in its broad, current definition, it’s a euphemism for sarcasm. “I’m not being sarcastic; I’m being ironic.” No, you’re not. You’re evading the responsibility for being sarcastic. You’re also being a sloppy thinker — just as someone using _literally_ (in Yankovic’s example “You ‘literally couldn’t get out of bed'”) almost always means _figuratively_, and a sentence beginning “With all due respect” almost always presages an insult. **(READ: Lily Rothman on the** [**no-longer-so-weird Al**](http://time.com/2949882/weird-al-yankovic-not-that-weird/%20 "undefined")**)** Yankovic decries the texters’ shorthanding of words into letters: _be_ into _B,_ _see_ to _C,_ _are_ to _R,_ _you_ to _U._ Given that Twitter permits only 140 characters for a message, the truncation is really thrift. Besides, as Yankovic notes in the song, Prince is probably the prime culprit, having slapped such titles as “I Would Die 4 U” and “Take Me With U” on his ’80s hits. The trope goes back further, to the [1955 novelty tune “I-M-4-U (I Am for You),](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YAO0M1tilKU "undefined")” written for TV host Jack Paar by Sev F. Marino and José Melis and consisting entirely of letters and numbers. So who do we blame? No. Whom?  RCA Records “Pronoun trouble!” — as Daffy Duck quacked to Bugs Bunny in the 1952 Chuck Jones cartoon _Rabbit Seasoning_ — is rampant these days, and probably always has been. Though I try to avoid it in writing, I wouldn’t guillotine those who use _who_ colloquially for _whom,_ particularly when _whom_ masquerades as the subject of a sentence, as in _Who Do You Trust?_ (a ’50s game show hosted by Paar’s successor as _The Tonight Show_ host, Johnny Carson) or Ray Parker Jr.’s No. 1 1984 movie theme “Who ya gonna call? Ghostbusters!” I do agree with the “Word Crimes” proscription: “Always say ‘to whom.’ Don’t ever say ‘to who.'” And don’t fall for the fake gentility of _I_ as an object. “Between Weird Al and I” may sound elegant, swellegant (in Cole Porter’s phrase), but grammatically it’s smellegant. **(SEE:** [**A career-long gallery of Weird Al Yankovic photos**](http://time.com/2989111/weird-al-yankovic-a-life-in-photos/%20 "undefined")**)** I also sympathize with neophyte writers (neophiters) who confuse _its_ the possessive adjective and _it’s_ the contraction for _it is_ — a mistake to which Yankovic devotes an entire verse. In the phrase “a dog’s life,” the dog is _it,_ so _it’s life_ can seem logical. Logical but wrong. To distinguish between the two, think of the dog as a boy: you wouldn’t spell _his_ as _hi’s._ So a boy’s life = his life, and a dog’s life = its life.  RCA Records Weird Al raps: “You should know/ It’s ‘less’ or it’s ‘fewer,’/ Like people who were/ Never raised in a sewer.” _Less_ should refer to collective nouns (less knowledge), _fewer_ to plurals of individual things (fewer brain cells). But that distinction may be a lost cause; I’ll bet that not even Whole Foods has a “10 Items or Fewer” checkout line. And what about _doing well_ (achieving success) vs. _doing good_ (performing benevolent deeds)? In “The Old Dope Peddler,” musical satirist supreme Tom Lehrer paid sarcastic (not ironic) tribute to a drug dealer who was “doing well by doing good.” But that song is more than 60 years old, so the two words may no longer be different from (not _different than_) each other. And with marijuana legally available in some states, the song may have outlived its comic point. **(READ: A Richard Corliss** [**tribute to Tom Lehrer**](http://content.time.com/time/subscriber/article/0,33009,997250,00.html "undefined")**)** Yankovic commits a couple of his own crimes — as in “Here’s some notes,” which should be “Here are some notes,” for the subject to agree with the verb — and quite a few rhyme crimes. Broadway songwriters Stephen Sondheim (rhymes with _rhyme_) and Leonard Bernstein (doesn’t) would never approve of pairing _proper way_ with _conjugate,_ or _find_ with _online._ These are false rhymes, lazy rhymes, blurred rhymes. Virtually every pop songwriter employs them today, but in a comedy song arguing for traditional grammar, they dull the precision of the wit. Yankovic also stoked a ruckus with this quatrain: “Saw your blog post/ It’s really fantastic/ That was sarcastic,/ ’Cause  RCA Records you write like a spastic” — an insult word that also can refer cruelly to those afflicted with cerebral palsy. [Yankovic quickly posted](http://arts.nationalpost.com/2014/07/21/weird-al-apologizes-for-offending-with-spastic-lyric-in-word-crimes-parody/%20 "undefined"): “If you thought I didn’t know that ‘spastic’ is considered a highly offensive slur by some people … you’re right, I didn’t,” he wrote. “Deeply sorry.” Apparently no one has complained about his use in the song of _moron,_ which psychologists once used to describe an adult with the mental capacity of a child. Like _idiot, moron_ has probably passed its sell-by date as an offensive term. That’s the sticking point about language: it keeps changing. Each person’s sense of grammar probably came from his or her teachers or parents. My mother, a first-grade schoolteacher, instructed her two sons that “between you and I” was wrong, and that the proper way to answer the phone was to say, “This is he.” But she was born in 1907 — for the edification of mathematicians in the room, I was a very late baby — and may have taken syntax cues from her mother, born in the 1860s. One hundred fifty years later, no one speaks or writes like Abraham Lincoln. In _Mad_ magazine in 1956, Doodles Weaver copyedited the Gettysburg Address, amending “Fourscore and seven years” to “Eighty-seven: Be explicit!” Yet today’s teachers indoctrinate their pupils with many rules from Lincoln’s time and long before. **(READ:** [**the complete parody of the Gettysburg Address**](http://www.madcoversite.com/odd.html "undefined") **by scrolling down this webpage)** Those who think we should go with the flow of evolution in syntax — welcome to the 21st century, word codgers — balk at the usage traditions of their very elder elders. I confess that I long avoided the split infinitive (“To boldly go where no man has gone before”), until I learned it was an 18th century codification by an obscure grammarian who thought English should be more like Latin. In that language, infinitives were an unsplittable single word: _to split_ is _dilaminare._ (Then again, few poets in preceding centuries split their infinitives. Shakespeare didn’t write “To be or to not be?”) Another Latin-derived no-no was ending a sentence with a preposition, which everyone sensibly ignores today. As Winston Churchill, one of the last century’s most powerful writers, wryly observed, “This is the kind of arrant pedantry up with which I will not put.” Modern grammar has also efforted (one of my favorite faux verbs) to free itself from sexism. Mankind is now humankind, and Gene Roddenberry would surely have rewritten his _Star Tre_k intro as “To boldly go where no human has gone before.” In the ’70s, during the first flush of grammatical feminism, the generic _he_ got modified into _s/he._ That didn’t take, but the pluralizing of _everyone_ did. The singular pronoun turns plural midway through the sentence “Everyone has their reasons.” I can’t bring myself to write that, so I usually perform pretzel exercises to make the subject plural: “All people have their reasons.” In my experience, copy editors, like the stalwart staff I’ve worked with and learned from in my 34 years at TIME, are linguistic conservatives — the keepers of the flame ignited by the Strunk-White _Elements of Style_, published in full in 1957 and chosen by TIME as one of the 100 most influential nonfiction books of the past century. And grammarians tend to be liberal, willing and often eager to promote common usage into acceptable speech. On a [fascinating episode of the Judge John Hodgman Podcast](http://www.maximumfun.org/judge-john-hodgman/judge-john-hodgman-episode-142-department-corrections%20 "undefined"), in which a man brought a complaint against his wife for correcting his grammar, Merriam-Webster associate editor Emily Brewster derided _The Elements of Style_, saying, “They even break their own rules. They say no split infinitives, and there are split infinitives \[in the book\].” For adjudication, I turn to TIME deputy copy chief Elissa Englund, who notes, “This isn’t actually true. _The Elements of Style_ discourages it generally but actually says there are times when it is preferable to split an infinitive. (See Chapter V, reminder 2: ‘Write in a way that comes naturally.’)” **(FIND:** **_The Elements of Style_** **among the** [**all-TIME 100 nonfiction books**](http://entertainment.time.com/2011/08/30/all-time-100-best-nonfiction-books/slide/elements-of-style-by-strunk-and-white/ "undefined")**)** Among the bugbears of Kira, the persnickety wife in the Hodgman case, were _irregardless_ (instead of _regardless_ or _irrespective_) and _most importantly_ (instead of _most important_). Brewster, as the expert witness on the episode, ruled that the first was now common and the second was new to her. Hodgman then asked Brewster if “I feel badly” was an acceptable equivalent to “I feel bad.” Again, Brewster pleaded ignorance of the distinction, adding, “Those don’t even sound funny to my ear.” (She meant they _didn’t sound funny even to_ _her trained ear_.) But they should have sounded funny (not funnily). You feel bad, not badly, just as you feel good, not goodly. James Brown didn’t sing “I Feel Goodly,” and a grammar scholar shouldn’t say “I feel badly.” Quick hint: If it doesn’t sound goodly to you, don’t use it. Liberal grammarians would tell us we live in a democracy, not a kingdom of antiquated rules. I’m a grateful subject of that kingdom, and I’m sure I’ve broken a few of my own rules, which readers are welcome to comment on. TIME’s spell-check always admonishes me whenever I compose a sentence in the passive voice, a warning that is often ignored by me. And the copy editor of a book I wrote for Simon & Schuster corrected my frequent use of years as adjectives (“the 1955 novelty tune …”). I didn’t know that was a word crime, and, between you and I, I keep breaking it. Nothing in a living language is written in stone. Over the decades, words go from wrong to right. Speak as you will; others will understand you, whatever offenses you utter against hoary tradition. Just realize that the people in a position to hire you, mark your exams or fall in love with you may have stricter standards of written and spoken English. Like Weird Al Yankovic, or the reporters who noted the _less_ and _fewer_ mistake on Greg Maddux’s Hall of Fame plaque, we grammar snobs are listening. \* \* \* _This is the first in a series of columns in which Richard Corliss drops his usually genial demeanor and assumes the stern tone of the_ **_Cranky Guy_**_._ ### Weird Al Yankovic: A Life in Photos  Weird Al Yankovic attends the Second Annual American Video Awards on April 5, 1984 at the Wilshire Ebell Theater in Beverly Hills, California. Ron Galella—WireImage/Getty Images  Run-DMC with Weird Al in 1987. Ron Galella—WireImage/Getty Images  Weird Al Yankovic attends the Fifth Annual American Video Awards on February 26, 1987 at Scottish Rites Auditorium in Los Angeles, California. Ron Galella—WireImage/Getty Images  Weird Al Yankovich attends the 30th Annual Grammy Awards on February 2, 1988 at Radio City Music Hall in New York City, New York. Ron Galella—WireImage/Getty Images  Weird Al Yankovic, as a parody of Rambo in his 1989 film UHF. Orion Pictures  Weird Al won a Grammy for Best Concept Music Video in 1989 for Fat, a parody of Michael Jackson's Bad. Ron Galella—WireImage/Getty Images  Weird Al Yankovic attends the 23rd Annual American Music Awards on January 29, 1996 at the Shrine Auditorium in Los Angeles, California. Ron Galella—WireImage/Getty Images  "Weird Al" Yankovic at Beacon Theater in New York City on February 6, 2000. Hiroyuki Ito—Getty Images  Weird Al Yankovic on The Tonight Show With Jay Leno on November 2, 2006 NBC/Getty Images  Weird Al Yankovic guest starred as himself on the sixth season of 30 Rock. NBC/Getty Images  Weird Al Yankovic performs at Sands Event Center on June 4, 2013 in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania. 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