How to Date an English Major

People often ask me (the successful romantic bookworm that I am) how to properly romance the English major. Indeed, dating an English major is a difficult proposition, as English majors are peculiar, temperamental creatures. Luckily, they are also creatures of a particular taste, and that taste is easily catered to. Follow these simple guidelines, and you will soon attract an English major to call your own.

1 – Get a Favorite Author

It shouldn’t come as a surprise to you that English majors read a lot. English majors learned to read voraciously growing up. Experiencing the lives of fictional characters somehow helped them cope with the fact that their fathers never hugged them because they weren’t athletes or cheerleaders. If you want to connect with your English major, you will need to learn to talk books with them.

When selecting your favorite author, proceed with caution. Genre writers are not appropriate choices for favorite authors. The best authors do not write fantasy, horror, science fiction, romance, or mystery. Rather, they write about lonely old men who play dominoes while staring out the window at their attractive young neighbors, then die.

You should never pick an author whose works have been adapted to major Hollywood films. People like J.K. Rowling, Michael Crichton, Dan Brown, and Stephen King may create works of fiction that are easily accessible to a broad audience, but this democratization of literature detracts from the appeal of living in an ivory tower of superiority that so many English majors delight in.

If you choose a favorite author from those you studied in high school, never select the dead white males. When your English major date hears you say your favorite author is Ernest Hemingway, they will assume you read the Cliff’s Notes to The Old Man and the Sea once. You’ll be branded immediately as a faker. You’re better off picking a dead white woman, like Willa Cather, or a dead black man, like Langston Hughes. If your favorite author is a dead woman of a non-white minority, prepare yourself for a downpour of English major kisses, for they will fall in love with you automatically.

2 – Develop a Tolerance for Stupid Ideas

There are two types of English majors: those who say they want to write the great American novel, and those who lie. Every English major has an idea for the best story that anyone has ever read, and, given the opportunity, they will ramble on for hours and hours about the intricacies of the plot that they have all mapped out in their heads. Now only if they could find the time to write…

If you ever inadvertently ask an English major to describe his or her novel, don’t panic. Be prepared to listen, smile politely, and ask questions to show that you’re interested. Basically, do everything you can to keep the English major focused on the brilliance of their plot, while you covertly text a friend to call you with the terrible news that your cat has just been diagnosed with terminal cancer.

Whatever you do, be sure to bow out gracefully, and never point out that their idea is another tired rehashing of The Lord of the Rings. English majors hate that.

3 – Sit Back and Enjoy the Riffing

English majors are notorious for talking during movies. If you’re lucky, you’ll find an individual who will simply content themselves with making the occasional snide remark. These comments are usually short, don’t lead to lengthy discussions, and they can actually be funny from time to time.

Unfortunately, there are those English majors who think their seven-page analysis of Kate Chopin’s The Awakening (complete with annotated bibliography) qualifies them to scrutinize every scene in every film with a keen metaphorical scalpel. Often, these individuals can’t keep their findings to themselves and will share – loudly – with everyone in the room. Plot holes you were once ignorant of will trip you up, Christ figures will populate plots like rabbits, and you will never be able to watch O Brother, Where Art Thou? without thinking of "The Odyssey."

If you’re one of those people who enjoy watching movies in silence, you can still date an English major. You just may have to actually talk to him or her (see #2).

4 – Be Prepared to Learn Your Grammar

Contrary to popular belief, English majors don’t talk solely about grammar when they congregate. However, they DO talk about grammar a lot. Specifically, they talk about how much they dislike people that use poor grammar. If you write your English major crush a note that opens with the line, “I think your pretty,” you can kiss that love match good-by. Therefore, it’s imperative that you learn:

• the difference between “there,” “they’re,” and “their.”
• the proper placement of terminal punctuation in relationship to quotation marks.
• the difference between an adjective and adverb.
• how to end a run-on sentence.
• not to split infinitives
• how to avoid mixed metaphors

You may be tempted to break grammatical rules ironically. Don’t. It doesn’t matter how provocatively you dangle your participles. It’s a huge turn-off.

5 – Don’t Mix Opinions

Like most people, English majors have strong and occasionally irrational opinions. While dating your English major, you are more than welcome to have opinions that differ from theirs. Your opinions aren’t wrong, they’re just… otherly right to the English major’s. Your opinions and theirs will occupy separate spheres. All will be well if the two never meet.

You may from time to time find yourself in disagreement with an English major. If you choose to bring your differing opinion up, remember what happens when matter and anti-matter come in contact. After you’ve spoken, don’t be surprised if your English major explodes.

In the end, it may be wisest to keep your opinions to yourself. True, you may have to seethe for a while inwardly, but in the long run you can be secure in your self-restraint.

Just follow these simple steps, and you’ll have an English major of your very own for the rest of your life. Keep the love alive by serving them a candle-lit dinner on your anniversary and reading the most provocative passages from Strunk and White’s Elements of Style, and every now and again, letting them proofread your emails before you send them.

Best of luck in your five-page double-spaced and properly-formatted relationship!