Woe is I

“When I split an infinitive, god damn it, I split it so it stays split.” ~Raymond Chandler

Authors and brothers, Tobias (wrote The Duke of Deception) and Geoffrey Wolff (This Boy’s Life), both wrote memoirs about their childhood. Their mother remarked that if she had known her sons were going to be writers, she would have been more careful about what she said.

This is how I feel about grammar. If I had known I was going to be a writer, I would have paid more attention in English class.

Fortunately, I have reference tools that I can use when I need to look up when to use lay vs. lie, an en dash vs. em dash, and what the rules are about splitting infinitives. I rely heavily on Woe is I by Patricia T. O’Conner.

Where it gets complicated is when I don’t know when I am breaking a grammar rule. For a long time, I thought “woe is me” was proper English. After all, didn’t Shakespeare write that in Hamlet? If you can’t trust Shakespeare’s English, then who do you trust?