“This was the kind of thing the grammarians liked to hear. Together they would see the paper into the grave with its syntax pure.” – Amsterdam, Ian McEwan

When I told the story (well, let’s face it – it wasn’t so much a story as it was the airing of a grievance) of a colleague challenging me (a self-proclaimed grammarian) on adjectival-phrase hyphenation, oddly, it was the first time he had heard the word “grammarian”.

“The grammar turned and attacked me.” – Adrienne Rich, “A Valediction Forbidding Mourning”