John

English isn’t Latin

May 5, 2005 Rant

In an email a few weeks ago, my former assistant (and alarmingly successful writer/director) [Rawson Thurber](http://imdb.com/name/nm1098493/maindetails) apologized for ending a sentence with a preposition. I insisted that he was well within his rights to dangle a preposition, split an infinitive, or break pretty much any rule he’d been taught about English — especially the seemingly-arbitrary ones.

Grammarians come in two flavors. A [descriptivist](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Descriptive_linguistics) studies the way people use a language, while a [prescriptivist](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linguistic_prescription) tries to lay down the rules of a language.

Prescriptivists are assholes. Ignore them.

Or better yet, try to make them explain why you’re not supposed to dangle a preposition. After all, there’s not a Bible of the English language, in which a certified deity listed his or her commandments. Backed into a corner, the prescriptivist will probably say, “because English comes from Latin, and that’s not allowed in Latin.”

Well, I studied Latin. It’s cool in a geeky way, sort of like computer programming. Many English words come from Latin, so it can be fascinating to play linguistic C.S.I. to figure out how “abscission” came from “away” and “to cut.” But here’s the most interesting and challenging thing about Latin:

It’s nothing like English.

Most notably, it has [cases](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_grammatical_cases) and [declensions](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Declension), which have pretty much disappeared in our happy language, replaced by word order and, you guessed it, prepositions.

But don’t just take my word for it. Here’s [another article](http://www.alphadictionary.com/articles/drgw001.html) that does a good job explaining why the grammar Nazis are wrong.

Good interviews about Father Knows Less

May 3, 2005 Film Industry, Projects

UPDATE: 4/28/2011 — Links to “Father Knows Less” IMDb listing no longer active.

UPDATE: 4/28/2011 — All podcast links have been updated.

podcast Okay. It’s not actually podcasting, but behold the site’s the first-ever audio links.

I’m currently rewriting a script called Father Knows Less, originally written by [Aline Brosh McKenna](http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0112459/maindetails). It’s the story of “a loving but aloof guy (Dustin Hoffman) abandoned by his trophy wife, [who] finds himself in charge of raising his young kids. In order to connect with them as their father, he turns to his children from his first marriage for help.” (synopsis by [IMDb](http://imdb.com))

Tonally, it’s a dramedy in the James L. Brooks mode. More [Jerry Maguire](http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0116695/combined), less [The Pacifier](http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0395699/combined). New Line is the studio.

As it happens, Claude Brodesser of Variety has been tracking this project on his KCRW radio show [The Business](http://www.kcrw.com/etc/programs/tb), and has had various members of the production on to talk about the process. It’s a refreshingly candid discussion of how a movie wends its way through development.

You can start with the [initial conversation](http://www.kcrw.com/etc/programs/tb/tb040621looking_deep_inside) with McKenna, agent Devra Lieb, and producer [Laura Hopper](http://www.imdb.com/name/nm1348882/maindetails) about the pitch, and how the project was set up. The discussion starts at 11:08.

Next, there’s a [follow-up conversation](http://www.kcrw.com/etc/programs/tb/tb040719cashin_in_on_the_pas) with McKenna and Hopper as they start looking for a director. Starts at 2:51.

Finally, Brodesser [talks with the movie’s director](http://www.kcrw.com/etc/programs/tb/tb050411battlestar_galactica), who explains his decision to take the project, and the discussion about bringing on a different writer (which ended up being me). The talk starts at 9:20.

Answer: You are an American male in his twenties

April 28, 2005 General

Thanks to the 470 of you who were gracious enough to fill out the not-especially-scientific [survey](http://johnaugust.com/archives/2005/who-are-you-where-do-you-come-from), I can now state with confidence that the typical reader of johnaugust.com is a North American college graduate in his 20’s who has a Y chromosome, but no WGA card.

Now, before anyone protests, I should point out that not all readers are typical. Some are women in their 30’s from South Africa with graduate degrees; others are older, younger, or more international. And one could easily fault the methodology: it relied completely on self-reporting, with no particular incentive for readers to click the link to take the survey.

Yet the trends in the data are so clear that there’s not a lot of point keeping the survey running any longer. If you don’t believe me, maybe some charts will prove the point:

chart: male/female

The vast majority of readers are men. That’s no surprise, but I wasn’t expecting almost 90%. I don’t know whether this reflects the reality of the male/female split among screenwriters or not. Regardless, I try to vary to my pronouns, so that I’m not always talking about “a screenwriter and his script.”

chart: age

Readers are a little older than I thought. Had I known that the under-20 categories would be so sparsely populated, I would have broken up the age groups differently. Given the average age, I may feel a little more liberty to swear.

Who are you? Where do you come from?

April 25, 2005 News

[ survey ](http://www.surveymonkey.com/s.asp?u=290091028219)On Sunday, I had lunch with Mary Edrington, my former marketing professor from [Drake](http://www.drake.edu). She was one of the best teachers I ever had, because she did the near-impossible: she made me care about boring numbers. Even though I was much more attuned to the creative side of marketing, I always appreciated her zeal for research. It wasn’t enough to come up with a clever slogan for some product; you had to prove that there was actually a customer out there to buy it.

At lunch, she asked me who the average reader of johnaugust.com was. I confessed that I didn’t really know. I can speculate about education level of some readers based on the comments. Checking the logs, I can tell you [what browser](http://johnaugust.com/archives/2005/why-does-anyone-still-use-internet-explorer) he or she uses. But my actual demographic data is an empty set.

So if you don’t mind, would you be willing to answer 10 really simple questions? I’ve timed it — it only takes 35 seconds, unless you write a big essay in the (optional) final comment box.

You can take the survey here. (**Update March 2011:** Link removed, outdated.)

After a week or two, I’ll put up the results.

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