Excerpt from The Grammar of Present Day English

Isir, said Dr. Samuel Johnson, the English lan guage has no grammar at all. And a century later the distinguished American scholar, Richard Grant White, declared that there is no such thing as gram mar in the English language. Doubtless the matter is not so bad as that; but the fact remains that our language has less grammar than the language of any] other civilized race, and is becoming more nearly gram marless every day. Yet, for nearly three hundred years instructors in English have been teaching a number of ideas, principles, and forms that either never were in English grammar, or have been so long extinct that there is no reason for their present study, and all this to the confusion and weariness of young students, sim ply because such ideas, principles, and forms happen to be in Latin grammar. The duty of the grammarian is not to invent or create, but to state and classify the facts as he finds them.

To those instructors of Latin and other foreign tongues who may complain that their students do not know enough grammar, we may simply reply that we are teaching English grammar, not for the purpose of en abling boys and girls to understand Latin syntax, but to help them understand the conventional or correct forms of expressing thought in the English of today. When the time comes for the boy to learn Latin, Greek, or any other language, let the instructor in those lan guages then teach his Latin, Greek, or other foreign syntax with all its complications and peculiarities. Fortunately, we are freeing ourselves from the tyranny of Latin models and are substituting a grammar which deals simply with the vital facts of the English tongue. The one purpose of this book is to aid the student in understanding and using the conventional or correct forms, structures, and terms of English as it now is.

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