Der Dativ ist dem Genitiv sein Tod (English: The Dative is the Death of the Genitive) is a series of books by Bastian Sick which deal in an entertaining manner with unappealing or clumsy use of the German language, as well as areas of contention in grammar, orthography, and punctuation.
[1] Since February 2005 it also appeared in print in Der Spiegel's monthly culture supplement.
The column's title, literally 'onion fish', is a printers' term for a single character with an incorrect font in a block of text.
In several German states, articles from the books have been used officially as teaching materials, and—according to Sick's foreword of August 2005, the series has been added to the set text list for the Abitur in Saarland.
On the other hand, the linguists Vilmos Ágel, Manfred Kaluza and André Meinunger think that Sick's books are not useful for teaching German because they contain factual errors, often just deal with irrelevant nitpicking, and don't give sufficient proof of why something Sick deems wrong should be wrong.