'Is When'

 

It’s been 13 years since I started writing a weekly grammar column. And just when I think I’ve heard every weird grammar myth that ever existed, another one comes at me out of nowhere. Here’s an e-mail I got from a reader in Upstate New York.

“You can’t be talking about grammar and say ‘is when.’”

Apparently, somewhere in my column, I had used this this term. I was so gobsmacked by the “rule” that I didn’t bother to check. Instead, I immediately wrote back saying that was a new one on me and asking my correspondent where she heard it and if she knew of any rule books that mentioned it.

She was cool enough to answer me: She had no source. A teacher had told her that once and it stuck in her mind. She had never heard it anywhere else and didn’t know of any book that discussed it.

In other words: We can add yet another silly superstition to the mountain of nonsense that people have been told and believed.

Like all grammar nonsense, the idea that you can't use “is when” may be rooted in some solid logic. There’s a common problem in writing called faulty predication that deals with sentences like “A death is when bereaved people come together to mourn.” That’s illogical because a death is a thing, not a when. Another example, “Good dental hygiene is when you brush three times a day.” Again, it’s just too weird to call hygiene a when.

But does that mean you can never say “is when”? Of course not.

 

 

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