When did you learn that “a” precedes nouns that begin with consonants, and “an” preceded nouns that begin with vowels. Kindergarten? First grade? Surely before high school.
Apparently, some seem to believe that this is specialized knowledge that a professional writer with a nationally syndicated column and best-selling book would not be privy to.
This has been a problem for years. I quote — or even make reference to — Dickens’ line from Oliver Twist that the ‘law is a ass’ and then I have to spend the next few days responding to email from people who think that I don’t have any clue about when or where to use ‘a’ versus ‘an.’ So let me just respond to the scores of people lecturing me in this regard. The line is ‘a ass.’ And lest you think I’m picking on you, when I’ve caved to the mob and written ‘an ass’ a whole other group of people chastise me for my literary, as opposed to grammatical, ignorance. I can’t win.
When one sees a professional writer write something like, “The law is a ass,” it seems there are three possible explanations:
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The writer knows what he’s doing, and is being ungrammatical for a good reason, such as preserving the integrity of a quote.
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It’s a typo or editing error.
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The writer doesn’t know a rule of grammar we all learned in grade school.
For many people, the answer seems to be “3.”
Whatever one thinks of Goldberg’s politics (though I suspect most of his writers are fellow conservatives), it is amazing that that many people would believe that someone could have achieved everything Goldberg has achieved without grade-school knowledge of grammar.
I guess there’s that anti-elite impulse in each of us. We want to believe that, had circumstances shaken out a little differently, we would be nationally syndicated columnists, and Goldberg would be sitting in his cubicle scanning our work for grammatical errors. Perhaps that explains the glee many take in the downfall of people like Eliot Spitzer, or some Catholics seem to take in correcting bishops.
But is sure is a pain in a ass.
