Growing up with a mother who patiently edited stories I churned out in primary school about wild stallions and roving wolves, I developed an intuitive sense of good grammar. Rather than resisting her red-pen corrections, I welcomed them. Mom, as well as numerous excellent teachers, instilled in me a love of the written word. Decades later, this foundation serves me well as a writing coach, and I’m always eager to expand my wordsmithing skills.
So my interest was piqued when I received a copy of the 2022 bestseller, Rebel with a Clause: Tales and Tips from a Roving Grammarian. Ellen Jovin, with a passion for language (she’s studied twenty-five languages for fun!) and impressive credentials, set out in 2018 on a quirky, delightful mission that entailed setting up a portable “grammar table” on the streets of towns and cities across the U.S. She would haul a folding table and chair to a random roadside, pull out dictionaries and reference books from a black rolling bag, and hang out a sign inviting passersby to ask grammar-related questions or vent about linguistic pet peeves. It rarely took more than a few minutes for people to approach her with a host of questions ranging from “where is the apostrophe in y’all?” and “are split infinitives OK?” to the proper usage of it’s vs its, affect vs effect, or that vs which. She’d gladly let them voice their rants; Oxford comma devotees, for example, were often incensed by its frequent omission. Her audiences spanned all ages and professions, from precocious students to construction workers and businesspeople. She treated everyone with respect and curiosity, eager to have a meeting of minds over word challenges.
Jovin’s book is an easy-to-read romp through these hundreds of conversations from places as far flung as Fargo and Martha’s Vineyard to Little Rock and Bozeman (bummer she missed Missoula). Not surprisingly, she is an excellent writer with a breezy, conversational style, who pokes gentle fun at strangers without ever mocking them, while refusing to take herself too seriously. She peppers her writing with clever, coined phrases—e.g., “grammergency”—as well as lines such as: “The versatility of the ellipsis in casual use means that it remains mysterious, sometimes even ominous, for some ellipsis recipients.”
Although Jovin is a gifted teacher, often using illustrations (helpfully included in the book) to clarify her responses, occasionally I found it mind-numbing as she waded into the weeds of sentence diagramming and nomenclature (think nonrestrictive appositives or restrictive relative clauses). Fortunately, the book is far from pedantic because it consists largely of dialogue, her witty back-and-forth banter with grammar table visitors punctuated by her explanations. My copy is earmarked and underlined for future reference: I’d love to have Jovin on my shoulder as I coach students.
Taken by what he called the “humor and humanity” of Jovin’s interactions with strangers, her life and business partner, Brandt Johnson, took on the role of videographer to document countless hours of grammar table talk. After the publication of the book, he then produced his first “docu-comedy” by the same name. It has been well-received throughout the country in independent film festivals and showings (though not yet in Missoula).
Jovin and Johnson created a website to promote the film, https://www.rebelwithaclause.com. I’m tempted to buy one of their t-shirts that reads: “The spaces after a period are the mom jeans of punctuation.” A bit wordy for a T-shirt, but what a hoot! Like Jovin’s book, it celebrates a refreshing lightness about the way we use language. Remarking on the divisions that are plaguing our country, Jovin noted in one of her interviews, “we have to focus on common grounds, like commas.” Or as a press release for the film pronounces: “Come for the grammar. Stay for the humanity.”