Why you shouldn’t be the grammar police, and how to get away with your mistakes

The correct response, when confronted with someone correcting your grammar, syntax or spelling, is an appeal to authority (Shakespeare) with a simultaneous request for their contradictory evidence from a superior authority (confident in the knowledge there is no greater authority on the written word). This may not work when it comes to obvious spelling or punctuation mistakes – but it should help keep the wolves at bay.

I have two slightly contradictory pet peeves. On one hand, I hate reading bad grammar – particularly their/there/they’re, its/it’s and your/you’re. This is mostly because I hate making the mistake myself. I feel so incredibly stupid when an error is pointed out. I think, deep down, that I am a perfectionist. On the other hand – I hate when people point out bad grammar – mine or otherwise. Nothing raises my online hackles more than the superiority of a grammar pedant. I tried being one once. It didn’t make me feel nice. I don’t know how others can do it – it must come from hating bad grammar more than one hates appearing like a complete and utterly superior prig.

If knowing how stupid you feel when someone points out your error does not stop you pointing out the errors of others (sticks, logs and all that jazz), and if you’re so sure that you will never make your own scorn worthy mistake so that you run no risk of hypocrisy, then perhaps you should continue reading – and remember that people actually think less of you when you correct your/their friends in public. Not more.

I will say that I think the exception to this rule is when an institution makes a mistake – and the closer the institution is to the rules of grammar the funnier it is. When governments have grammar style guides and stuff up bridge inscriptions that is funny. When we laugh at Chinese translators mangling English while making their country more open to visitors that is cultural imperialism.

I’ve read a couple of articles today courtesy of Twenty Two words that helpfully reminded me that being a “Grammar Nazi” does not make one superior – nor does it actually make somebody a better writer. Imagine how the very Bard himself would be remembered if he had bowed to the pressure of the grammar pedants of his day.

Firstly, grammar pedants speak too early too often and provide no evidence for their claims. They expect us to sit idly by and accept their views on the movable feast of language while providing not a skerrick nor shred of corroboration for their claims. Up with this I shall not put.

Here’s an article that compares grammar experts with etiquette experts who make claims and then move the goal posts when someone disagrees.

This article provides recourse for people like me who want to rid themselves of pesky comments from friends who suffer from badgrammaritis (symptoms include the inability to let bad grammar pass unpunished).

We have all heard admonitions at some point or other that the word unique cannot be modified — a thing is either unique or it is not. This would be considerably more convincing if it were not so obviously untrue, as people modify unique quite frequently, and have done so for a long time. Through the magic of Google Books you can now search through enormous numbers of books and magazines from the 19th century and see literally hundreds of writers who use more unique, less unique and even that bugbear of the purists, somewhat unique.

(And speaking of literally, the next time someone tells you that it cannot be used to mean aught but literal, you might point out that it has been used in various figurative and nonliteral senses for hundreds of years, by such literary figures as Jane Austen, Charles Dickens and Richard Milhous Nixon.)

The article points out that most grammar conventions and corrections are given without any sense of evidence – in fact, on Facebook where both bad grammar and pedantry runs rampant, corrections are given with a sense of superior satisfaction but no reference to any rules or conventions that actually back up the criticism.

The erudite conclusion from the NY Times article is proof that a predilection for pedantry does not give you the exclusive rights to good writing. It’s today’s rule breakers who become tomorrow’s rule makers. To use an analogy – pedants are the engineers of the writing world while the rest of us are the artistes – the architects and interior designers, the painters, the landscapers and the Feng Shui consultants.

So I say outpedant the pedants, and allow yourself to gluttonously revel in the linguistic improprieties of yore as you familiarize yourself with the nearly unique enormity of the gloriously mistaken heritage that our literature is comprised of. For those of you keeping score at home, that last sentence contained a verbal noun, a split infinitive, an improper -ize, an inflectional comparative, a blatantly misleading word choice, at least one example of catachresis, an unnecessarily passive construction — and it ended with a preposition. All of which I’m willing to bet appear in Shakespeare.

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4 Comments for “Why you shouldn’t be the grammar police, and how to get away with your mistakes”

  1. 1Stuart Heath

    The only person I consistently correct (okay, a little bit) is my wife. I do this partly because she doesn’t seem to mind, and partly because she’s got the primary responsibility of teaching our kids to speak. And, you know, purgamentum init…

  2. 2Nathan

    Do you do it in public (ie Facebook or comments posted on blogs)? I suspect not – though the only people I correct publicly are family members. And I do that to protect the family brand.

    I think correcting people in private is a service. Nobody wants to look like an idiot. It's when you post a comment to tell somebody that they're wrong in a public forum (or in front of others) that I think is a problem.
    My recent post How to write a poetic media release

  3. 3AndrewFinden

    I wonder if there's perhaps more ground for invention and rule-breaking in creative writing. Appeal to Shakespeare and Dickens might be fine if you're a novelist or a playwright (but then, does anybody actually correct the grammar of a professional storyteller?), but should that stand if you're writing a news piece, or a blog? Also, some might argue that one should only break the rules once you've learnt them – is a mistake the same as intentionally breaking a rule as per your last quote?

    Who noes?

  4. 4Peter Kutuzov (Kutz)

    Andrew is exploring a thought that I've long held. You need to know the rules in order to know how to break them to best effect.

    It's like a well-placed swear word. :P

    The fact that masters of communication set new trends, forms and conventions doesn't make poor communication any less poor. And the fact that you rail so holistically against the existing conventions of communication may perhaps suggest that your knowledge of the purpose of those conventions is less than masterful. (Does anyone see what I did just there?)

    The thing is, that is entirely untrue. Nathan has a lot of communication ability and nous. Which makes you a funny contradiction, mate.

    I don't correct anyone's grammar unless they ask me to do so, however. Except on the Hattrick forums.
    My recent post Existential dilemmas

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