Also, grammar rules are a byproduct, not cause, of effective communication.

Also #6

Greetings from the backside of standardized testing hell.  It smells like sour coffee and ulcer-ridden farts and if there’s any joy it’s impossible to hear over the wailing and gnashing of teeth.  It sucks.

I think about grammar a lot.  Partly because it’s my job and partly just because I really like grammar.  Figuring out all the weird intricacies of the English language as expressed through the constraints of grammar is fascinating. It’s like a puzzle that can be put together a dozen different ways and everyone thinks their way is right. But at its core, grammar is just another way to impinge order on to chaos.

The best part of these beautiful autumn afternoons is that there’s nary a grammar test in sight.

Point One: There’s a misconception out in the world that grammar can be good or bad.  This is a lot like people quoting dictionaries as the authorative source on something when it should be understood that they’re merely a record of the way a word was used once.  Grammar is the same - when you speak your native language, you rarely think about grammar.  You don’t need to.  Instead, you just use your language to communicate.

At this point, it’s worth remembering that every interaction you have with any person, living or dead, through speech or books or dreams, is nothing but finding the most effective way to transmit your thoughts and feelings and to receive those of others.  That’s it.  Every other thing we think we’re doing when we talk falls into one of those two things, transmitting or receiving.

Grammar, as a de facto part of language expression, is a tool to help you do that.  But the labels we use to describe grammar? Those aren’t always necessary.

Point Two: As a general rule, don’t ever correct someone else’s grammar unless you’re being paid to and, even then, only on the specific items you’re being asked to look at¹.  When you casually correct someone else’s grammar in conversation, you come across as a boor, an elitist, or, possibly, racist.

The flip side to that is, when someone corrects your grammar, it’s worth asking what it is they’re hoping to gain by doing so.  In rare cases, they might be honestly trying to help you, in which case, see the paragraph above, but most times, especially online, people are trying to raise themselves while lowering you.  That’s it.  Call it bad acting or malicious intent or willful misconstruing of a situation, but they all boil down to an attempt to put you in your place which is lower than theirs.  The only correct response to this sort of behavior is to say “fuck off” and walk away from the conversation.

My coffee spot is looking a little overrun at the moment. Kind of appropriate for this point in the semester, I guess.

Point Three: A lot of the really obscure rules that people pop out with are not actually rules for using English “correctly.”  Instead, they were rules dreamed up by very privileged old men in ivory towers who thought English should be Latin.

Point Four: Anyway, just to allow the devil to have his advocate, what about the idea that by having good grammar you’re showing your quality - by speaking well and with the proper vocabulary you are displaying to teachers, potential employers, voters, whomever, that you can use this language well.

Yeah, that’s true.  Unfortunately.  But I suggest reframing it a bit - and this is for people who dish out this advice as much as anyone who is being given it - what people are actually talking about here is adapting to the situation.  For a lot of people, this might be code switching, or just choosing whether or not to use a learned accent over their original one.  Either way, it comes down to matching your language to the situation all the better to transmit your thoughts and feelings.

Point Five: As we move into the age of robot intelligences doing a lot of our writing, you're going to see English grammar change. Standardized English has been an academic goal for many schools and research institutes for a long, long time. A.I.s will help to make it a reality, whether they mean to or not.

But, yeah, grammar. Look, grammar ought to be done in the past tense, after the fact. Because it's a great tool for analzying why some bits of communication are more effective than others. Want to know why advertising is so effective? Look at the grammar they use. Want to know why that poem sounds so beautiful? Look at how the author used grammar. Need to find out how close to the truth someone's story is? Look at their grammar, just don’t correct it.

1. As in, if someone says, will you please copyedit this post for grammar and here’s some money to do so, go ahead and correct their grammar. Otherwise, just don’t.