March 4, 2008
It’s National Grammar Day
I aspire to membership in the Grammar Police. There! My dirty little secret is out! Poor word usage and faulty sentence construction make me cringe, sometimes make me laugh and sometimes make me feel superior to the offenders. I’m working on controlling those reactions. I don’t publicly correct the mistakes that I stumble across while cruising around the blogosphere or visiting message boards. I may tune you out, but I don’t embarrass you when your conversation grates on my nerves as it mulilates my ears. After all, I’m not a member of the Grammar Police and have no official status as a corrector of others’ mistakes. While I find the slaughter of our language offensive, I don’t envision myself as having the right to chastise those who perpetrate and perpetuate the crime. There are many flaws in my own character, so who am I to place myself above others who engage in a practice that our society finds at least tacitly acceptable? I content myself instead with a mental blue-peniciling of offending material. This is apparently an autonomic function of my brain, one that I find abhorent but have not been able to overcome. I also place repeat offenders into my “ignore” file. I just cannot make myself take seriously a writer who egregiously abuses the English language, nor do I find such abuse amusing or entertaining. No, strike that. It’s not entirely true. The errors I behold do sometimes make me laugh, but said laughter is akin to an inappropriate fit of giggles during a funeral. As I stated above, I’m trying to control it. I fully understand that online writing may adhere to less rigorous standards than, say, an English textbook or my daily newspaper. Understanding and acceptance are two different things. Regardless of the wisdom or entertainment value a site might offer, I cannot routinely subject myself to the laborious task of trying to find the wheat among the chaff. Your blog is not on my list of sites to re-visit if you make my eyeballs bleed. Your advice posted on a message board becomes invisible to me when it’s obscured by horrific mangling of the language. I acknowledge that such an attitude of moral superiority is unbecoming. I shall continue to seek the wisdom to accept the things I cannot change.
That calm acceptance has not yet enveloped me, so today I salute some of my heroes. It’s National Grammar Day, an appropriate occasion to celebrate the contributions of the true Grammar Police, those with the bona fide right to address the shameless butchery of grammar, syntax and spelling. Their job description entitles them to poke, prod, admonish and belittle those who would place their faulty phrasing before public scrutiny. Surely their labor must sometimes seem a thankless task that, on the best of days, carries with it a sense of futility. Those who care about language usage seek their knowledge and defer to their judgements, while those who would most benefit from their intervention continue blithely on their way. Several generations of young people have moved through our crippled public education system since it abandoned English proficiency as a requirement for graduation. It is now possible to obtain a masters degree by submitting a thesis fraught with grammatical errors. It’s even possible to teach English while having no command of the rules that govern its use. Like begetting like, the young mis-taught miscreants of today are even now breeding succeeding generations of scofflaws. I sometimes believe that the damage cannot be undone, but our professional grammarians offer hope that coherence and sensibility may yet someday be re-established in the written and spoken word. Toil on, you noble warriors, though the rewards may be few. I want to believe that you can accomplish your goals. Kudos to SPOGG, the Society for the Promotion of Good Grammar, for establishing this national day of recongition. You almost persuade me that that our language can be saved. You almost persuade me abandon reticence to go public with my red pen.
While some of the above is conveyed with tongue firmly in cheek, I realize that publishing this post will, figuratively, paint a bullseye on my back. Fire away! I will try to accept all corrections to my own errors with good grace and warm gratitude for your concern.
National Grammar Day logo shamelessly stolen from SPOGG.org.
Technorati Tags: disgrace, education, educators, English, English grammar, National Grammar Day
Posted by skeet @ 4:48 pm • Education, Society & culture
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March 4th, 2008 at 10:42 pm, Baby Says:
Are you sure it’s not National Grammer Day? LOL
March 5th, 2008 at 6:44 am, Nathan Blair Says:
This is great - I never knew there was such a thing as SPOGG! I’m only sorry that I missed National Grammar Day, as it would have given me a valid reason for striving to be so grammatically correct. Oh well.
March 5th, 2008 at 11:25 am, Whim Says:
Heaven knows we need a National Grammar day!
March 8th, 2008 at 10:48 am, skeet Says:
Oh, Baby! How could you?!
March 8th, 2008 at 10:50 am, skeet Says:
Do we need a reason for proper grammar, Nathan? I doubt that having a National Grammar Day had much impact, but at least it’s an acknowledgement that there’s a problem.
March 8th, 2008 at 1:40 pm, Martin Says:
Back in 1993, I got out of a bed that had a naked woman in it to phone 1-800-GRAMMAR (long story)
It turns out that it isn’t a help-line.
March 9th, 2008 at 6:37 pm, skeet Says:
Martin, I rarely know how to reply to your comments and this time is no exception!