How to tackle any English essay question

--UPDATE-- 
I've made a new site dedicated solely to teaching academic writing! Click here to check it out! Every week you'll find a new tutorial, and every tutorial will be easy to read and easy to learn. I'm also writing an ebook that I'll give away free to anyone who subscribes. I hope the site proves useful!
Sadly, I will probably no longer be updating this site. But the new site is better. In every way. 

In my template for how to write an English essay, I used a rather straight forward essay question, i.e. 'Show how a character in a text presents a main theme'. This is a rather basic essay question, perhaps too basic; and while the structure of an essay may be easy for you, the essay questions you're told to answer might not be. In fact, if you read that last post, you were probably sitting there screaming, "But my essay question has nothing to do with character! And worse, it has nothing to do with theme! GIVE ME WHAT I WANT!"

So I wrote this post as well. It's really long.

Important: main theme, main idea, central idea, author's purpose, and all other such phrases mean the same thing. Feel free to put them into the 'theme' box.

To start, you should know that one of the most important rules for writing an English essay is that you should connect your essay question with a main theme, even if your essay question doesn't contain the words 'main theme'.

Why:

1. The goal in any essay is to show how something in the text conveys something relevant to society.
2. Themes are relevant to society.
3. Use a theme.

Q: What's a theme?
A: A theme is a recurring idea in a text, such as courage, discrimination, or something a little more specific, like kingship vs tyranny. (Hint: if you aren't sure what themes are present in your text, google them.)

In short, no matter your question, always talk about theme (with tight reference to the text) for the sake of making your text relevant. Make sense?

Let's pretend you've been given the following question:

First things first: substitute specific details for the general ones in your essay question.

The tricky part about this question lies in those last two words: 'surprised you'. Ugh.

Don't worry. It's easy. All you have to do is replace those dumb words with the reason that Lennie's death surprised you (even if, in truth, you weren't all that surprised).

Not all reasons are useful. Here are some examples:

GOOD reasons:
1. Lennie's death surprised me because it exposed the predatory nature of mankind.
2. Lennie's death surprised me because it reinforced the punishing nature of life on earth.

BAD reasons:
1. Lennie's death surprised me because it was unexpected.
2. Lennie's death surprised me because he killed Curly's wife by accident, and the others should forgive him.
2. Lennie's death surprised me because he was my favourite character. Sniffle.

There's a very important difference between a good reason and a bad reason. Good reasons, you'll notice, are themes! Bad reasons are not themes, and they trap you into talking about something that nobody cares about. Pick a GOOD reason, and you'll see that the words 'surprised you' have been conveniently substituted for a theme. Magic!

Note: even though the essay question doesn't contain the words 'main theme' or 'main idea' or whatever, that doesn't mean you can't discuss a theme. And if you can discuss a theme (which is always), you should discuss a theme. Why? Because a theme makes your essay, and the text, relevant to society. It answers a sort of "Why does this essay matter?"-type question, which is a very important question to answer.

You might be thinking, "But my teacher said to 'stick to the essay question'. Isn't talking about theme, when 'theme' wasn't specifically mentioned, bad?"

Nope! By talking about theme, you're simply answering the essay question - whatever it is - in the way it was designed to be answered. It's an essay, remember, not a plot summary.

Think about it. If your essay question didn't state the words, "With reference to a text you've studied..." would that mean "don't reference a text you've studied"? Of course not. You'd fail every time - EVERY TIME - if you avoided referencing a text.

"Yeah, all right," you say, "so that question wasn't so bad. But there are worse ones!"
And you're right; there are worse ones. Let's take a look at one of them.

Such a stupid question, right? Who cares? (The person who hands out grades, that's who.)

It's difficult even to substitute stuff; but don't worry, you don't need to. All you have to do is describe a main incident and how that incident shaped future events. Then, explain what that shaping of events meant for the text as a whole (but secretly with reference to a theme).

To do this, it's important to remember why you're writing this essay. You're writing this essay to make a point that readers should care about. In this sense, it's kind of like writing a persuasive speech, or having an argument with your mum. You're right, they're wrong. Prove it.

So, for an essay to work, you need to have something that the marker should care about, and you need to know why they should care about it. In the first essay question (above), the marker isn't going to care that Lennie is your favourite character, but they are going to care that John Steinbeck used Lennie's death to convey a theme. This theme is a much better foundation for your essay, rather than, "Uh, he was my favourite character."

It works the same for the second question. With regards to the shaping of future events, the marker isn't going to care that the death of a mouse led to the death of a man, but they are going to care if John Steinbeck used this death of mouse/man to show something, like, I don't know, a theme.

Look at the question again. It's an annoying question because it doesn't look theme-able. But to make it theme-able, all you need to do is apply that unspoken question I revealed earlier. "Why does it matter?" This is the underlying question that any essay question is and isn't asking you. You need to answer it because it makes your essay relevant to society. I keep saying that.

Anyway, the answer to the question "why does it matter?" is this:
It (the shaping of future events) matters because it presents a theme (or themes). It impacts the text as a whole because it helps the text present the theme. And it's this theme which you can use to relate the text to society.

In other words, what the essay question is really saying is this:

Admittedly, this is a trickier essay question to manage than one of those 'character to theme' or 'setting to theme' or 'relationship to theme' ones. So, below you'll find an essay I prepared earlier (It will help if you've read the book, Of Mice and Men). In it, I chose to a) describe the incident that changed the course of future events first, and then b) explain the themes presented from the impact that this change had on the text as a whole.

Note: This (a) then (b) process is recommended when answering two-part questions such as this one. It's also recommended that you answer the essay question in the order that it's given. Do the describing, then do the explaining. (If your essay question just says 'explain' or 'analyse' or 'discuss', then don't worry about describing anything.)

Here's the essay:

(Unsure about how to structure an English essay? Click here)

At the heart of every essay is a message to society. In other words, you get marks for making the text relevant to today. The easiest way to make a strong case for why your text is relevant to today is through theme. Therefore, theme-ify your essay question. Next, find proof from your text (examples - ideally with quotes and/or techniques). Finally, explain how your proof is evidence of your theme.

© Matthew Ferri 2014 (no plagiarising)

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The mobile phone: my closest friend

Literally. I take him everywhere I go because I feel vulnerable without him. He sleeps beside me, wakes me up, tells me that it’s raining outside. During the day, he sits squarely in my pocket. Perhaps you have a similar friend?

Every now and then I teach him a new skill. He learns it in seconds, kind of like how Trinity in The Matrix learnt how to fly a helicopter. Only, unlike Trinity who’s human and will grow old and stop learning things, this companion of mine will continue to learn until the day his heart stops beating - or battery stops charging. 

But I can’t teach him everything;  this one has a limited knowledge capacity. Nonetheless, he’s sturdy, cheap to run, fast. You might as well say that he’s… no; he isn’t perfect. He gets close.

When I introduce him to friends, I say he’s this super nice internet-connected gizmo who does amazing things. The downside is that he occasionally buzzes and wants me to talk to someone. I’m not fond of those moments. Not fond at all.

We’ll be hanging out, he and I – writing things, reading other things, playing games – when all of a sudden: Vvvvrrrrnnngggggg! The name of a person I probably know interrupts my aloneness, and my friend here sings a song – loudly – to break the silence. It’s a song I’ve grown sick of. In fact, I’ve grown sick of every one of his songs.

I get it, he’s warning me – like your dog yapping to warn you that someone’s on your property. And that someone will keep coming back unless you deal with him now. It’s a universal truth that it’s better to deal with him now. But as that damnable song screeches through the pores of that tinny speaker, I’m less inclined to appease it and more inclined to question why I live in a society that insists on answering - answering doors, answering questions, answering phones - and why I have a problem with it. Actually, why do I keep a device whose fundamental purpose is to make answering stuff easier? Why would I do that to myself?

I’m an introvert; I choose my friends carefully. But this friend – this closest friend – isn’t so good at discriminating. He sings for everyone. Every single one. If only I could live without him.

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The be-all rule for using apostrophes

Correct usage of the apostrophe is a lot more straight forward than most people think, despite all the evidence otherwise (see: internet). In fact, one friendly rule can be used to solve every apostrophe crisis, and that rule is:

**Apostrophes are tags**

Seriously. That’s all they are. If you think of apostrophes as tags, you'll never be confused again.

Basically, when you’re tagging (attaching) a word to another word, add an apostrophe. When you aren’t, don’t.

Here’s how it works:

Tagging to indicate possession
Rule: When tagging to indicate possession, put the apostrophe on the end of that word. If there isn't an 's', add one of those, too.

Case 1:
Kirin the Enquirer: “Hi there. So, I have this sentence. It goes, ‘The laptop belongs to Matt.’ I want to attach the word ‘belongs’ to the word ‘Matt’ in order to make them one word.”

Hello, friend, and how very resourceful of you. Sure thing; simply tag the words ‘belongs to’ to the word ‘Matt’ using an apostrophe and adding an ‘s’.

Case 1b:
Kirin: “Sweet rolls. Thanks! What about this one? The food belonging to the cat has gone stale.”

Same thing, partner. Merge’n’tag!

Case 2:
Kirin: “Right, but what if there are two or more cats, and the food belongs to all of them?”

Ah, a tricky question – not! Just go right on ahead and tag’em!

Kirin: “Whoa! You put the apostrophe after the ‘s’. What’s up with that??”

Nothing, squire. It’s the same idea as before. We took the word you wanted to use – cats – and tagged it with an apostrophe on the end of the word. But because 'cats' already has an 's', we didn't need to add one. Here’s a breakdown for you:

Word: Cat (without s)
Tagged form: Cat’s

Word: Cats (with s)
Tagged form: Cats’

Word: People (without s)
Tagged form: People’s

Word: Peoples (with s)
Tagged form: Peoples’


Case 3
Kirin: “Okay, got it, but what about possessive pronouns? Words like its, yours, his, hers. Why don’t they get apostrophes?”

Haven’t you been paying attention? You only add an apostrophe when you want to tag words together. However, possessive pronouns are words on their own. None of them consists of two words being joined together (tagged), so the apostrophe is unneeded.

Think about it. You wouldn’t write, “I think this laptop is your’s” because that expands to: “I think this laptop belongs to your.”
Yours, by itself, has already done the work of combining ‘belongs to’ and ‘you’.

Also, the opposite of yours is mine. If yours had an apostrophe, mine would need an apostrophe as well. Mine’. Min’e. Mine’s. You see my point.

In other words, because possessive pronouns are words on their own and not tagged words, and because they already do the apostrophe’s job by themselves, possessive pronouns don’t need an apostrophe – ever!
(Possessive pronouns include: yours, mine, his, her, theirs, ours, its*, whose*.)

*Examples in which you would use 'its' and 'whose':
"Shae, whose car was written off last week due to its engine disintegrating into dust, is going to the auction today."
"Whose car did you say it was?"
"Shae's; it's the car with its engine missing."

Kirin: “Yeah, yeah, that makes sense. But aren’t there, like, other itses and whoses, which are tags?”

Yes, there certainly are other itses and whoses, which are tags, but they're different. They come under contractions.


Tagging to indicate a contraction
Case 4
A contraction is an informal word that results from meshing two separate words together. An example of a contraction is the word doesn’t. It’s the contracted - and tagged - form of does and not.

Similarly, the word it’s is the tagged form of it and is or it and has. It’s (with the apostrophe) always means either 'it is' or 'it has', as in, “It’s really unfortunate that your car engine disintegrated into dust.”
So, if you put an apostrophe onto its in the *examples above, then you're indicating that the word has been tagged - that it is a combination of two or more words. That sentence will no longer make sense, and it will be in some serious need of proofreading.
Its = possession (belongs to it)
It’s = contraction (it is/it has)

The only other contraction worth noting is the word who’s – the tagged form of 'who is', or 'who has'.
Ask yourself, "Which two words am I tagging?" If the answer is you aren't, then use whose (see the *example above).
Whose = possession (belongs to someone)
Who’s = contraction (who is/who has)

Kirin (drunk): "Choice, thanks! One more thing. Can apostrophes be used to make singular words plu--"

No! Apostrophes cannot be used to make singular words plural. That’s what the letter 's' does. Apostrophes are, however, used to tag - either for possession, or for a contraction. That's all they're used for. That's all they will ever be used for. In other words, when you aren’t tagging, you shouldn’t be apostropheeing.

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"It's not instant enough!"

Snappy and passion-filled, these were the words of a friend speaking on the subject of reheating food in the oven as opposed to the microwave.

The oven, I'd argued, retains the crispiness of a pizza base or the stability of a pie pastry - and we all know that a pie's pastry is make-or-break, literally. I said if we didn't have to contend with time, the oven would win.

But she was quick to remind me that we are always contending with time, and so, whenever we juxtapose the quick-start blitzer with the oven's knobs, fan-force and backlight, most of us will simply give shrug to the latter and declare, "It's not instant enough."

Little did I know then, but she had it right. In another time I was content with waiting for my dial-up internet connection to load my Neopets profile or that Homestar Runner episode, even though the latter's audio would run ahead of the video by dint of, you know, the dial-up. Things like this were far from instant, but they were more than enough.

In another time, there was this thing called 'patience'; and even when it came to technology - even when a web page would load in its stop-motion-style unveiling as each bit by literal bit of content appeared onscreen - I remained content.

Now, jump forward to last week: I did not remain content. There was an internet outage - or rather, an internet hissy fit - and it just wouldn't sit still. I tell you, the web of 2014 was as sporadic as a flickering dim light swinging on a cord in a horror film, and had this fit lasted any longer than it did, I would've had a case of hissy to call my own.

See, I'd been promised broadband with download speeds that made one's face alight. But on that day, during that bout of internet indecision, it was more akin to dial-up, albeit without the electronic scratching noises that many of us can play by ear. This wasn't right, I said. This wasn't instant enough!

Even when the connection appeared to have fixed itself, web pages would load in a jittery slowness. It was like coming early to the airport, expecting it to be empty, and finding an impossibly long queue leaking into the foyer because everyone else had had the same idea. It was the bane of the first world, and I was its unsuspecting victim.

But yet, in this moment of strife was an afterimage of reminiscence. I recalled my old dragon from Neopets - now starving to death from a lack of sausage omelette - and asked him, "At what point did this all start to change?"

Coffee will never be instant enough. Not ever.

Technology is meant to help, not hinder; it's the magic of the modern world; it's there to astound and to surprise us on a planet which grows increasingly destitute of wonder. And indeed, it does astound - once. But following that, it becomes common place - so much so that even wonder itself may soon wither into novelty.

Somehow, over the last two decades, our expectations have become so inflated that they now coincide with basic rights. Our soons have been superimposed onto nows, and our needs and wants have become so interlaced as to remove all difference. The time bracket has become our worst enemy, and technology's best selling point. Wonders are no longer appreciated but expected.

However means through which this change has occurred, it's been slow and insidious, a usurper who for years we never knew was king. And if we are the masters of ourselves, then we have only ourselves to blame. Ironic, isn't it, that in many ways my twelve year-old self was more mature than I am now at twenty-five? A small part of me knows that this isn't how life is meant to work.

We are mammals; we adapt; and we adapt far faster than it does us good. We rip the extraordinary into its constituents, but the re-assemblage thereafter is a chore that takes too long. A web page used to take thirty seconds to load; now, if it asks for more than three, my instinct is to hit refresh repeatedly and with increasing violence, rather than give it the time of day.

You can sit on a seat thirty thousand feet in the air and travel at over 900kph, and that was wondrous, too, once. Now, along with the cramped seating and the lacklustre movies, human flight is an age-worn oven. It's not instant enough.

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Matt defies standardised grammar and teaches a new grammar - part two

If the whole thing about split infinitives wasn't convincing enough that adherence to strict rules can be stupid, here's another:

Which of these sentences is correct?

1. The pack of wolves is hunting the chickens.
2. The pack of wolves are hunting the chickens.

Answer: both. You can decide. The rule is that there is no rule! (But there should be.)

Part two: group nouns are fiddly
What's a group noun?
Words like 'pack' are called group nouns. 'Faculty' is a group noun; 'group' is a group noun. There are thousands of group nouns.

British English tends towards treating group nouns as being plural, and therefore using 'are' in the case above rather than 'is'. Americans favour the opposite. In either dialect, no firm rule has been decided on. While one may be preferred, either is correct.

Personally, I favour logic, and therefore I think that there should be a rule for all cases in which group nouns are used. For the example above, I think Americans have it down pat, but their reasoning (none) is stupid.

Logic begins here.

Like everything in grammar, it's not the exact word choice (is or are) that makes you correct; and it's not really to do with what sounds right, either. Instead, it's what you mean by your word choice - what you're really trying to convey - that determines which word, which rule, you should use. Remember, language is a road, not a destination; so, when you're trying to get somewhere smartly, it's always right to take the smoothest road.

With that said, here is the rule that should exist for the above example:

The phrase 'of wolves' is prepositional; it describes the word 'pack'.
"The pack [of wolves, not potatoes, or fun-size Snickers] is/are hunting the chickens."

Prepositional phrases can be removed without harming the grammatical integrity of the sentence. So, which word would you prefer if we were to remove the prepositional phrase?

"The pack is hunting the chickens," or, "The pack are hunting the chickens?"

An interesting example: "Leonard's family is very big; Leonard's family are very big."
Different meanings entirely, no?

Still unsure about the is/are conundrum? Don't worry; it's less unreasonable than it looks.

Aside from omitting the prepositional phrase 'of wolves', we can also replace the first word of the sentence, 'the', with another, more convenient-for-Matt's-argument, word.

FOR INSTANCE, say we chose to use 'are' rather than 'is'.
"A pack of wolves are hunting the chickens."
"This pack of wolves are hunting the chickens, but that pack are not."
"One pack of wolves are hunting the chickens."

One pack are hunting the chickens.
'One pack are'
ONE, AND ONLY ONE, ARE!

Hmm.

Here's a helpful illustration:

Straight forward, right?

Now, please understand that, while I believe that the 'is' rule applies to this example, it only applies because the intended meaning of the sentence is better conveyed with the word 'is'. The 'is' road is far smoother than the 'are' road for this one.

Now, here are some exceptions that give the 'are' argument, or are-gument, some dignity:

"Leonard's family are real-estate agents," sounds better than, "Leonard's family is real-estate agents."

"The team are conversing amongst themselves," sounds better than, "The team is conversing amongst itself."

But there's a subtle difference between these examples and the one with the wolves. The 'are' works better here because we aren't really talking about the family or the team as a unit; we're talking about the members within the family and the team.

We're really saying: "Leonard's family [members] are real-estate agents," and, "The team [members] are conversing amongst themselves."

So, the rule should be that, when you're talking about members, you should count the number of members to figure out if it's better to use 'is' or 'are', but when you're talking about packs or groups, it's better to count the number of packs or groups instead.

In other words, if you're talking about each wolf within the pack, use 'are', but if you're talking about the pack itself, use 'is'. Therefore, the pack of wolves [regarding the pack itself, as in, "Look at that pack go!"] is hunting the chickens.

Sadly, this isn't the rule. There are no rules. But I guess it doesn't matter too much. After all, we still have common sense, right? I mean, there's no law that says, "Slow down when you see flashing lights ahead," but you'd still be the fool if you didn't.

**********

Part One

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The sweetest essay on language that you'll ever read

My good friend Rowan was inspired (special thanks to our society) to write this short but awesome essay; and then he let me post it on here because Facebook's chat box wasn't built for sustaining rants. Read and be nourished.

“Punch the keys, damn it!” - by Rowan Thorpe

Finding Forrester had it right: while writing, one must indeed punch the keys. This is true not only of the typewriter but also of the laptop. I, at least, find the need to be very noisy when I write. I’m not sure why this is; I just find it gratifying. But perhaps the thing that I miss most is the ability to express myself in my own words – not to have to muzzle my expression while being around those who constantly require the definitions for my words. 

The requirement to explain myself is annoying and almost degrading to the other person; I feel as though I belittle such people as I speak to them. I know that this notion is incorrect, and I am aware that, in truth, I am in fact expanding their mind and their vocabulary by educating them in the art of the English language, both in diction and in knowledge. Yet still I feel almost aloof, and so I do what I must to avoid the long and mind-numbing explanations that come with speaking at my level of language. I tone down my vocabulary to the lowest level, the lowest common denominator, so that all might understand. I’m not sure that everyone can appreciate this dilemma. I fear that it is one only experienced by those who have been brought up to love the English language and appreciate its finer points, to be able to argue it down to the definitions of words and why one should use one word instead of another when addressing certain types of people or making an argument in a certain arena.

Some might say that I’m an English snob, and there is a certain truth to that. I cringe when I hear “th” pronounced “f” or those who mumble, mispronounce or otherwise mutilate the mother tongue. It bugs me that people do not take enough care to communicate effectively with their speech, let alone the murderous way they portray the English language on common social media websites, especially when they are trying to make a point that they wish people to take seriously, or indeed when they are commenting on a major life event. These are the times when accurate and precise language are needed so that all might share in the news or appreciate a strongly held belief.

Now it is true that language evolves, changes and grows. But what we are currently witnessing is more unto the reduction of language foreseen by Mr Orwell is his Novel 1984 – we are killing language, reducing its form and size until we are left with a strange mutilation involving numerals and symbols, to the point that a person living 50 years ago would not understand the diatribes polluting the internet, and as such our common use of the English language, so that we all lose our extended ability to both recall and use words, words, words, as Shakespeare once put it.

Read this book.

This loss, therefore, is suffered not only by me but also by the public at large as we bring up children who not only use acronyms to describe how they are feeling in online situations but have started to use these same acronyms in everyday “speech” going as far to say LOL rather than laughing and to say BRB rather than the full version, be right back, for fear that the extra half second it costs them may in some way be massively detrimental to their life and that they may miss some experience because they uttered a fully formed sentence rather than the only slightly shorter and yet far less descriptive one. And some would say even more heinous acronyms, like WBU, that they have become accustomed to using. And all the while English loses so much of its expression to the point that one must oft even define ‘acronym’ itself to the very culprits who use them as common place language, as they know not what they do.

This sad predicament that we now find ourselves in is largely due to technology. The very thing designed to make our lives easier, better and more knowledgeable has had the opposite effect, culling the language of Shakespeare, of Milton and of Wilde to a state where none of those giants would be able to recognise it, let alone read it.

Perhaps in punching the keys all too often we have killed the very thing we were trying to create – not by a thousand paper cuts; but instead, by a million million strokes of the keys, we have stabbed and typoed our way into a pseudo English scarecely worthy of our predecessors.

Perhaps we should all put down the laptops and pick up a pen every now and again, open a book instead of waiting for the movie to come out and speak – though speak with elegance it would, like those who came before us.

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Matt defies standardised grammar and teaches a new grammar - part one

Recently, Al Yankovic (Weird Al) published a song called Word Crimes, which immediately became my favourite song ever, because a) it parodied Robin Thicke's misogynistic Blurred Lines, and b) it promoted good grammar.

Al, in a gesture of poetic irony, took a song that bespoke society's decline in love and respect, turned it on its head and suited it in an armour sturdy enough to take on the almost-as-crucial decline of the English language.

Unfortunately, a meddlesome Third Group of people seemed to notice that Al, in his song, made a grammatical mistake of his own. This group singled out the error over and above all of the critical truths he very humorously conveyed.

What was his error? In one of the last lines, he split an infinitive.

Part One: It's quite all right to split an infinitive

Weird Al's sacrilegious line reads, "Try your best to not drool." Are you cringing yet? Because, according to a rule somewhere, you should be.

What's a split infinitive?
You split an infinitive whenever you slot an adverb between the words 'to' and 'be', or 'to' and 'go', or 'to' and whatever.

The line, "To boldly go where no man has gone before," is a famous example.

What's an adverb?
Adverbs describe verbs or adjectives. 'Run' is a verb; 'run slowly' is a verb plus an adverb. 'Go' is a verb, and 'to go' is also a verb, but it's called an infinitive.

'To boldly go' is a half infinitive, then an adverb, and then another half infinitive. Evidently you're not meant to break infinitives in half (split them).

Personally, I, if at all possible, prefer to soundly reason than to blindly follow.

The commandment that "thou'st an infinitive shall 't be split, else thy head," comes from Latin, from which much of English grammar was derived.

In Latin, splitting an infinitive would render the sentence useless. You couldn't do it and still make sense.

But - and here's where the sound reasoning kicks in - we don't speak Latin.

More sound reasoning:
Language is a road, not a destination, and there's no point having roads if you've got nowhere to drive. It's the meaning that's important, not the density of your silly infinitive. Just look at him! (Above)

My understanding is that language is how we communicate, not what we communicate.

Third Group's counterexample to sound reasoning:
Beyond pretending that English is Latin, in most cases, splitting an infinitive will make your sentence sound awkward. There's normally a better way to write the sentence than to split the infinitive. So, basically, the meaning of your sentence is usually conveyed better with the infinitive left whole.

What this is really saying, though, is that rules exist for a reason. Full stops, for one, separate sentences. Stop signs keep people from crashing. Un-split infinitives, well, they help keep things sounding nice.

The Third Group, however, rant about Weird Al's split infinitive with none of this reasoning in mind. Their argument goes as follows:

"He split an infinitive!"
...
...
...
"Burn him!"
...
...
...

Right. Anyway, in the song in question, Weird Al achieves two important things by splitting an infinitive: humour and rhythm. These things are important because Weird Al is trying to a) be funny, and b) write a song.  Funny things need humour and songs need rhythm. What they don't need are roads with dead ends.

The last three lines of the final chorus, with the emphasised words in bold, read like this:

Go back to pre-school

Get out of the gene pool

Try your best to not drool

A little bit rude, right? That was intentional. The joke wouldn't have been effective had the infinitive not been split and the line read instead, "Try your best not to drool," (preserving the sacred infinitive).

This is because the emphasis on 'not' (rather than 'to') is what communicates the idea that not drooling is an exception to the norm. The only other way that the humour would have remained intact would've been to, I guess, rewrite the entire line and break the rhyme, but that would compromise the rhythm, and in turn the humour... so, actually, no.

Splitting the infinitive made that third line incredibly effective because it achieved exactly what Al had intended.

It should be known: grammar rules work most of the time because, most of the time, following them is the best way to achieve the exact form of communication you intend. For instance, I have followed a heck of a load of grammar rules in writing this blog post.

But the rules do not always help. Take the word 'silence', for example. By itself, 'silence' is just a word; yet, you can find it in many a novel, alone, by itself, acting as an entire sentence. Gasp? Not yet.

The word tells you one thing: that there was silence, but the word being by itself can show you other things, like suspense, tension, fear, and uncertainty. Had the sentence read like a sentence, "There was silence," then the emotions might not have been effectively conveyed.

The emotional value of the sentence is strengthened due to its simplicity (one word); and, if this is what the author intended, then writing "silence" as a sentence was entirely justified.

In saying that, a person should understand a rule before he dares to break it. He should know the rules by heart before he toys with them, otherwise it could very well be his head.

In a way, the Third Group is right. They know that you need a rule book before you can drive, but they're forgetting that no one drives without first having somewhere to go. And for that, you need a brain, too.

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