We had the pleasure of interviewing Ellen Jovin, proprietor of the Grammar Table, the star of Rebel with a Clause—a new documentary filmthat premiered January 10—and the author of the US national bestseller Rebel with a Clause: Tales and Tips from a Roving Grammarian (HarperCollins, 2022).
We invite you to join Editors BC and Ellen for “Winter Grammarfest!”
When: Saturday, January 18, 2025, 1:00 pm to 2:30 pm PST
Where: Online via Zoom. Registration is open until January 17.
Enjoy the Q&A below!
We’re excited to have you with us! To start, I’m sure many of us are curious about the idea of a travelling pop-up grammar advice stand. What made you think of that?
My whole life has been full of grammar interests. For years leading up to the Grammar Table, I maintained a language-learning blog called Words & Worlds of New York, for which I studied different languages and reviewed hundreds of self-study language-learning products. And I was also in a gazillion online language groups, mostly on Facebook. It was all great fun, but my language interests had turned into an online activity, and I like being around actual people. I decided I needed more light, air, and human exposure, so I thought I’d take my grammar interests outside.
What were two or three highlights of your travels?
That is an almost impossible question for me, and I’d like to explain why, because it is relevant to the philosophy of the Grammar Table project. The concept of a flyover state is alien to me; I love going everywhere. All different kinds of places and people are interesting to me. I was pretty excited to hit New Orleans, where I’d never been before, and also Red Cloud, Nebraska, a town of 1,000 or so people that was home to the writer Willa Cather. I love being in places with a pedestrian culture, and Detroit was great for that. People need places to gather and talk over issues of the day, or community news, or maybe even punctuation problems! I love visiting Canada, by the way, and would love to bring the Grammar Table there as well. (Yes, that is a hint.)
And now I feel I have sidestepped the question, so I will offer this: I was extremely happy to spend an hour talking to two hilarious construction workers on a sidewalk in Decatur, Alabama, about punctuation, apostrophes, ellipses, calligraphy, Italian, and more. They admired my handwriting greatly, and one even said I should sign baseballs. I couldn’t have had that same experience in New York City, and if you read the book or see the movie, the reasons I say that will become more apparent, I think.
Why did you make a movie about this experience?
My husband, Brandt Johnson, made the movie. I basically sat around conjugating things and eating grapes while he served as the entire movie team: producer, director, cinematographer, and editor. He spent six years on the project. He got the idea to film back in late 2018 soon after he first saw me talk to people at the Grammar Table outside our building in New York City. He thought the interactions were beautiful and funny and needed a wider audience. I am extremely fortunate that he felt that way. We’ve been together 31 years and have a communication skills training firm together called Syntaxis. There is a lot of language talk in our home. Still, before the summer of 2018, I did not expect there to be a Grammar Table, nor did I expect there to be a grammar road trip documentary about the Grammar Table.
What was the most common grammar question people asked?
There’s nothing that even comes close to the Oxford comma. I am asked about the Oxford comma almost every time I set up the Grammar Table. Distant—and I mean really distant—seconds might be apostrophes, semicolons, pronoun forms, and where you can or cannot place your prepositions. But seriously, Oxford commas dominate the grammar imagination of the United States. My book’s Oxford comma chapter was well over 100 pages long in the earliest draft because I had so much material to work with.
Did anything about this whole experience truly surprise you?
I knew that people of all backgrounds loved talking about grammar long before I did this, so I was sure people would talk to me at the Grammar Table. That part did not surprise me.
I suppose two main things surprised me. Since I am on public streets, I am sometimes approached by people who are facing serious challenges in their lives, and I had some astonishingly deep and insightful conversations about grammar, etymology, punctuation, and more with people who I would have thought had other, much more pressing things on their minds.
But that takes me to the second point: People really need to talk to other human beings about something so that they can maintain connection and community. That need in myself is part of what led to the creation of the Grammar Table, but the appetite for it in others was greater than I had realized. Our increasingly online lives have not helped bring us closer together. The internet is a wonderful thing, but societal health requires plenty of productive, positive, in-person interactions.
Many thanks for taking our questions, Ellen. We’re looking forward to “Winter Grammarfest!”
