UNI's 'Dr. Grammar' Has the Last Word on English
By Andrew Wind

It started 39 years ago with simple questions from his co-workers in the steel mills of Gary, Ind.

"They would ask, 'What did you learn in school today?'" said James HiDuke.

A student at Calumet College of St. Joseph in nearby East Chicago, HiDuke would enthusiastically tell them - whether it was about philosophy, history, literature, astronomy or art. Soon the steelworkers, many with only a grade-school education, were coming to HiDuke every break to hear his "lectures."

Eventually, HiDuke realized his love for teaching and decided to head for academia. He is now an assistant professor of language and literature at the University of Northern Iowa. Known for his ability to answer tough language questions, he has been given the nickname "Dr. Grammar."

"I love literature," said HiDuke. "My passion is basically for writing in general and for communication in general. Getting the job done with grammatical correctness is only one part of that."

"It's also a passion to help," he added. "This is a helping profession."

Now UNI is trying to spread that help across the state through a Dr. Grammar Web site on the Internet. HiDuke has recorded public service announcements and been talking to the media to promote the new site. UNI even put up a billboard on University Avenue with a Dr. Grammar caricature to advertise the service.

HiDuke fields questions through the Web site on everything from simple matters of proper language usage to such complicated topics as proper attribution of sources taken off the Internet. He said so far 70 percent of the e-mails have been people off campus.

"I guess the job is we're here to be a resource, and let's just find out who's going to use it," he said.

"We've had questions from all parts of the state, from every type of individual you can imagine," said Jeffrey Copeland, UNI professor and head of the English department.

Questions have run the gamut from a small town mayor's checking the wording of a sign to the Iowa Attorney General's Office while it was putting together a piece of legislation. The site has even attracted people writing love letters who wanted to get the words just right.

HiDuke said it was his four years in the mills that put him on the road to becoming a professor. A native of Hammond, Ind., he started working at the steel mills as an 18-year-old in 1961. He would work from midnight to 8 a.m. as a production clerk and go to college during the day. It was that daytime learning that fueled his "night class" teaching.

HiDuke believes the steelworkers were so interested in him because he was "the only student they knew" besides their children. "In their case, it's not that they wanted to learn Aristotle," he said. "They just wanted to find out what their kids were learning."

When he got his bachelor's degree, HiDuke was ready to move on. "I wanted to desperately to leave the region," he said, describing the bleak landscape of oil refineries, steel mills, concrete plants and railroad tracks around Gary.

"I wanted out. Somewhere in my little pea-brain, I decided I didn't want to work in the steel mills for the rest of my life."

He left and earned a master's degree at Marquette University in Milwaukee. In 1967, he joined the staff at UNI, where he primarily teaches introductory English and writing courses.

It's an eye for detail that has given HiDuke his reputation. "I seemed to be more of a stickler on language with my students," he said, noting he can easily pick out 99 percent of the errors in a student's paper. "People just started asking me questions."

"He's a very demanding teacher. He expects excellence from his students," said Copeland. "They know his reputation, and the students who are in his class are there because they want to learn, and they want the best education they can get."

"Grades don't come easily in his courses," Copeland said. "The students earn them."

"I hope I don't lose perspective," said HiDuke of the demands he places on students. My desire to get it right, my insistence that they get it right, probably makes them think I am demanding. It's just that nobody has demanded it from them before."

He doesn't remember the first time someone called him Dr. Grammar, but once the nickname came along it stuck. "This is just an extension of what I've done all my teaching life," said HiDuke. So is his tendency to try to correct grammatical errors he sees outside of the university walls.

Several years ago, he noticed an out-of-place apostrophe on a sign while passing Allen Hospital in Waterloo. The words advertised "doctor's offices"-or one doctor with many offices. After driving past the sign a number of days, he called the hospital and told an official it should read "doctors' offices."

"He said, 'Are you sure about that?'" recalled HiDuke. "I said, 'Yeah. You do surgery, I fix sentences,' It kind of felt good." The hospital's sign company confirmed it was an error and made the change.

"Jim does not want to be known as the 'language police,' said Copeland. "He's not out there to make fun of anyone or embarrass anyone. He's there (for people) who want to know more about the language."

"This certainly is not the most important part of writing," said HiDuke of the small grammatical details he often deals with. "But at some time our writing does become important to us. At that point the people call me."