For as long as I live I will champion the rules guarding the English language. Though living languages evolve over time, there are generally accepted guidelines as a means of, well, assuring that we can continue to communicate with one another. If you’re writing something that’s meant for the eyes of other people, then the assumption is that you want them to understand it. The addition of a single comma can completely change the meaning of the sentence, and even if your audience understands what you meant, the fact remains that they had to waste precious seconds trying to figure it out, seconds that took them out of the flow of the narrative.
It’s not an easy thing to master. For one thing, our educational system does a pretty pathetic job of teaching us to tell our gerunds from our predicates (anyone? Anyone? Bueller?) I pride myself on my grammar and punctuation, and I really have no idea what those words mean. That’s because, for me, grammar and punctuation have become instinctual. Forget labeling the parts of a sentence. Forget words like ‘preposition’ and ‘conjunctions.’ Good grammar is about sound.
I certainly didn’t learn anything about grammar from my terrible high school English teachers, most of whom thought that reading half a novel every three weeks was sufficient prep for the Advanced Placement test. I learned about period placement and semicolon usage from my mother. To be more specific, from having my mother correct my Harry Potter fan fiction.
Yes, fan fiction. You’ve probably seen it before, whether it be based on a book, a movie, a TV show, a video game, or a board game (seriously, there’s fan fic for Candyland), and you’ve probably realized most of it is atrocious. So was mine, when I was first starting out. Then my mother stepped in, and though she insists that even then my writing was genius (it wasn’t, I’ve read it since), she was eager to correct my grammar. Instead of just fixing my mistakes and passing it back to me, she did me a favor – she marked the places that needed correction, but left it up to me to make the changes.
After a few exchanges like this, I started to recognize my own errors. Those little lessons coupled with the books I devoured – like Pride and Prejudice and the Discworld series – taught me right from wrong. Now I don’t think much about it – until revision time. Revision time is when I read my work aloud; if there’s a particular sentence that’s been bugging me, hearing it out loud can help me identify the problem. If it sounds wrong, that’s usually because it is wrong, grammatically. Or it needs a comma, because when read, there’s a pause. Listen to your words.
It’s all about practice, and you won’t master it overnight, but if you try, and you learn to trust your instincts, if you ask for help, then you too can listen to television commercials and correct them when they use ‘less’ instead of ‘fewer.’
If I sound obsessed, it’s because I am. I take poor grammar personally, as it seems to me that if you want to be a writer, you ought to have a basic grasp of the language in which you’re writing. Seems only fair.
‘Why bother?’ I’ve heard people say. ‘That’s what editors are for.’
And your manuscript has to pass through a number of hands before it ever reaches an editor. Every lap it lands in has hundreds of others just like it to read – which do you think is more likely to get forwarded, the one with random capitalization and an overabundance of ellipses, or the one that person can actually read without interruption?
On behalf of readers everywhere, the little people who go through hundreds of pages a week sifting gold from muck, I implore you to find someone whose sole job is to proofread your copy. Having input on your story structure, plot, characters, or dialogue is invaluable as well, but chances are if you switch tenses more than twice in your opening paragraph, the reader is not going to care how much effort you put into that character’s backstory.
Here are a few basics to get you started:
- Homonyms are the number one cause of death amongst writers – aside from drinking – especially those for whom English is a second language. This is where time, practice, and proofreading comes in. I emphasize this because while the words may sound the same, their meanings are so different, that the use of ‘pear’ in a sentence instead of ‘pair’ really throws off the reader. Homonyms are usually accidental.
- ‘Its’ means belonging to ‘it,’ as in: The rock was red, its surface was striated. ‘It’s’ means ‘it is,’ as in: It’s a beautiful day in the neighborhood.
- Commas, periods, and other forms of punctuation go inside quotation marks, and in dialogue, it’s a comma before the speech tag, not a period. For example: “I think I’ll go for a walk outside now,” said Cindy. “The summer sun’s calling my name!”
- Less is used when referring to something you can’t quantify; fewer is used when you can. I have less money than before I bought the flat screen, but I have fewer dollars. Try switching them around – doesn’t sound right, does it?
If these are already familiar to you, count your blessings. There are so many writers out there who just never had the chance to learn, and by the time you reach college, professors aren’t interested in wasting their time fixing your errors. You could go through the rest of your life wondering why no one is taking you seriously despite your brilliant ideas, and it’s all due to an errant apostrophe.
Will poor grammar and punctuation absolutely keep you from getting a book deal? I wish I could say yes, but there’s enough printed garbage out there to prove me wrong. All I can say is that despite this being the 21st century, the publishing industry is still very old school, run by people who actually did learn this stuff in high school. Every little bit helps.
Comments & Discussion
I'm not pretending to speak for everyone, but I can state with confidence that none of the five English teachers I had in four years of high school dedicated their lives to helping me, in any respect. The person who has most dedicated her life to getting me where I am is my mother, and she doesn't get paid for it at all.
I think Allison and you are right that grammar is instinctual. If correct English is spoken in a child's home it carries over to adulthood, but without that basis the English teacher's job is much more difficult, especially in the younger grades. Teachers are my heros. I was lucky to have been educated in the first half of the 20th century; the school curriculum was quite a bit different than it is today. I went to one-room country schools until junior high, and all the English classes taught GPS. Coupled with reinforcement at home and two years of Latin in high school, by the time I got to college I had no worries about such basics.
The only word I see consistently misspelled here is "definite".
I definately agree with this. No, just kidding. I definitely do.
I have come to the conclusion that some people are simply gifted in grammar and syntax, and that they are in the minority. Does that mean that I as a teacher (or editor or writer) give up on the rest? Nope. I strive to teach grammar contextually and in a variety of ways in order to reach as many students as possible. I also integrate some English linguistics lessons along the way to help my high school students understand the origins of some of those seemingly arbitrary rules. Finally, I make sure my students know several excellent online grammar resources and understand the value of taking a quality writer's handbook into the world with them for those inevitable grammr emergencies. If only teachers were paid more, then I could give every graduate said handbook.
I agree with you that writers need to be skilled in grammar. If writers are among the unfortunate majority who would not recognize a dangling participle or appositive phrase or verb tense inconsistency, then they do need to be aware of this weakness, bookmark the helpful grammar sites, and find an amazing proofreader before submitting anything.
I hate to condemn an entire profession because I love English.
Yours, Cyn
Don't even let me get started on the schools. I remember one teacher telling me, the easiest way to make sure you get hired is to lie. "Tell them you can coach some sport and you're much more likely to get hired." I also remember that every year there were discussions about cutting band classes or agriculture classes to make budget. Yet, never once was it mentioned, that they might cut the Lacrosse team. The team was averaging ten spectators a game. Nobody ever mentioned cutting the field hockey team. (Their attendance was literally zero for half of the season.) In the end the sports teams stayed and Future Business Leaders of America was disbanded because it only had ten participants. Most of the other clubs were also disbanded. (Math teachers used their own money to keep the math club going.) The clubs that survived were cut back to monthly meetings. So, doesn't that tell the kids something about how important education really is today?
Then we have the home life. Unfortunately parents don't push their kids to become intellectual giants anymore. They want to "support" their kid's dreams. Well the average kid says they want to either be rich or famous when they grow up. So parents hustle them off to soccer and dance and a million other activities. Parents rarely hustle them to a library where they can actually exercise their brain. Then when they all finally make it home at night the parents are crashed in front of the television watching Survivor, Big Brother, or Rock of Love while the kids tweet and message back and forth. The whole environment is detrimental to a love of learning. It is even more detrimental to civilized discourse and thoughtful use of language.
We have to blame a whole lot of things before we focus on teachers. That isn't to say that all teachers are great or perfect. I had more than a few that were lacking. However, I had far more that tried their hardest to make sure we learned more than what was on the next test. For that I will forever be grateful to people like Mr. Smithson, Mrs. Birch, Ms. Coats, Ms. Yeager, Mr. Deter, Mrs. Eidner, and Mr. Maher.
Most of all I am thankful for Mr. Philip Rigden. He had the courage to run an elementary school where children still earned a classical education. He made sure we were exposed to many facets of life and helped us become well-rounded people.
