Grammarphone

Dial Ufor Usage

Should you write "in the 1960s" or "in the 1960's"? Is it "a U.S. Representative" or "an U.S. Representative"? Where does the apostrophe go in "the Smiths' (or Smith's) car"?*Fifteen times a day, on the average, telephone callers put these questions to an Emporia State University English instructor with the appropriate name of Faye Vowell.

Vowell, who presides with consonance over the university's writing lab in Emporia, Kans., offers free guidance on a writer's hot line, a Dial-a-Grammarian service for students and anyone else who calls with a question about correct usage. Other such lines have sprung up lately at the University of Arkansas in Little Rock, Ark., and the Johnson County Community College near Kansas City, Kans. "We get several calls a week from California alone," says Arkansas English Instructor Michael Montgomery. The most common questions concern the correct use of who vs. whom, and which vs. that. The most frequent callers are secretaries struggling with their bosses' dictation. But college faculty members and local magazine editors have also rung up the help fully un-silent Vowell and her colleagues.

The hot lines are less than two years old, and growing steadily in popularity. The phone service costs Arkansas and Johnson County next to nothing, since instructors and graduate students from writing labs are regularly assigned to phone duty, and the callers pay for their own calls. But at Emporia the service is costing the English department roughly an extra $100 per month, because the university pays for calls made to its toll free number from anywhere in the state of Kansas.

Since it is easier to phone somebody than to look something up, the hot line may prove more of a debilitating crutch than a boon to education. But so far, the hot-line faculties report, Kansas students have not thrown their Fowlers to the winds. The service has led to more, rather than less, concern about learning usage.

TIME Reporter Tim Miller tested the hot lines by making informal calls to all three colleges. Emporia State and Arkansas, but not Johnson County, corrected his run-on sentence ("Enrollments will continue to decline, no change in the pattern is in sight") and his incorrect use of "less" for "fewer" ("Less students are enrolled this year than last"). The response was no better when he wanted to check out the more subtle misuse of "whom" in a subordinate clause ("They wanted to hire whomever was the best candidate"). A Johnson County instructor correctly insisted that Miller switch to "whoever," but at Emporia, an unidentified voice, presumably a graduate student, told Miller the sentence was correct as it stood. The quickest and surest correct answers to all three questions were provided by Little Rock's Montgomery, who mans his hot line during morning hours. His number: 501-569-3162. --

* The answers: 1) Either 1960s or 1960's is correct; 2) "a U.S. Representative"; 3) "Smiths' car."

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