Mind Your Predicate Nominatives

Although not an English major, I enjoyed almost all of the piece on “How Princetonians Saved The Great Gatsby,” in the last PAW. I say almost all because as someone who took several years of Latin while it was still taught in our public schools and was forced to diagram sentences seemingly ad nauseam in junior high English class, it was disheartening to read on the first page the following topic sentence: “As artists even better than him have done ... Fitzgerald died in penury.” As a lifelong educator, primarily at the secondary level, and daily reader of publications such as The New York Times, I have come to realize that the teaching of traditional/formal English grammar is a thing of the past. That said, it is still jarring to read or listen to misuses of the predicate nominative by educated writers/speakers. If the author did not realize her mistake, an editor should have.