Return to Index

The Grumpy Grammarian

We grammarians are a small minority, and we may seem to be little more than nitpicking fuss-budgets who take perverse pleasure in criticizing how "normal" people speak and write.  We are often viewed as ivory-tower pedagogues, meddlers, or grumps.  Some people may think that we are a trifle mad, devoting time and energy to such matters as the difference between it's and its or other issues about which sane people obviously don't give a hoot.

The truth is that we are fascinated by language in much the same way that a mathematician is fascinated by numbers or a scientist is fascinated by what makes the physical world tick.  Like the poet (I forget who it was) who said that he liked to "hang around words and listen to them talking to each other," we enjoy exploring how language works.  Strange as it may seem to those who do not share this interest, we find words and their relationships to be extremely interesting and often amusing.  Occasionally, too, we may reflect on how amazing it is that human beings have been able to devise a way to express the most complex thoughts and emotions by using otherwise meaningless sounds and symbols.  Language, we think, is nothing short of a miracle, and without some sort of grammar, evolved over centuries of usage, no sophisticated language could exist.

While grammarians do get considerable enjoyment out of language, I must admit that we tend to be a grumpy lot.  One reason this is so is that we respect language enough to feel that it should be used properly and that too many people abuse it – or, at best, take a cavalier attitude toward it.  They don't care what is "proper" as long as it somehow conveys the message.

Do I exaggerate about the lack of respect that the proper use of language gets?  In response to a question on this site asking what the main reason was that people use faulty grammar, 27 of 104 respondents (26%) said the reason was that "they don't care/think it's unimportant."  An additional 9 (another 8%) said that the reason is that "grammar is illogical" or "proper English is not necessary."  In other words, roughly a third gave a response that implies a feeling that how we use words and how these words relate to one another is somehow not important.  That's a terrible attitude toward language – one of the most significant of the skills that differentiate human beings from other animals.

If this is true of the population as a whole, it is hardly surprising that instruction in the correct use of language has been taking a back seat in the schools.  If a significant minority of people feel that something is unimportant, it will naturally receive little emphasis.  (On the same poll, 28 people said that the main reason grammar is faulty is that it isn't taught, or isn't taught enough, in the schools.)

What's wrong with faulty grammar if we get the message across?  That's a good question, but it's not the right one.  The real question is how well we convey the message.  It can be graceful and easily understood, or it can be awkward and obscure.  If one believes that the conventions of usage and grammar have nothing to do with our ability to communicate, if one feels that we can trash all of these conventions and still share ideas effectively, grammar doesn't matter.  The truth is, however, that without the agreed-upon conventions respecting word meanings and word order (syntax) – that is, without grammar – our speech would be meaningless babble, and our writing would be so diffcult to decipher that only inveterate puzzle-solvers or professional decoders would have any interest in reading it.

Student writing is often ineffective not so much because it is ungrammatical as because it does not make sense.  When I show students the sentences that other students have written, their first response is not to point out the grammatical errors.  Their first reaction is, "Huh?"  They protest that they can't "fix" such sentences because they don't know what the sentences say in the first place.

When we look closely at these garbled and incomprehensible sentences, we discover that the reason they cannot be understood is that the words are used improperly or are in the wrong order or do not relate clearly to one another.  In other words, the quality that "doesn't matter" – the grammar – is faulty.

Anyone who maintains a site such as this must believe that grammar matters.  Anyone who believes this can't help but get steamed about the widespread assault on proper grammar and usage.  We must either let off steam or be locked up in institutions where we cannot get our hands on sharp objects with which to murder people who are murdering the language.

Perhaps it is redundant to add more pages of grumbling when I already have a section of "Pet Peeves" (devoted gripes about misuse of language) and one called "Grumbles" (devoted to anything else I feel like bitching about).  However, these other sections are often – believe it or not – more restrained than I sometimes want to be.  I stifle the urge to go over the top and often delete my more rapid outbursts before I publish.

At least once a month, however, I need to rant, rave, rail, fulminate, and explode, to exorcise the demons.  In my saner moments, I realize that killing gnats with a sledgehammer is extreme and may cause considerable collateral damage, but sometimes it is perversely satisfying to abandon all delicacy and restraint when assaulting an irritation, even when the target is as insignificant as a gnat.

Please go on to Page Two