Are verbals fierce? Watch for dangling participles, they’ll get you unawares. Gerunds, nominatives, predicates, they can sneak up on you and make you look foolish. And whatever you do, never split an infinitive in public.
And if you think that sounds treacherous, just wait for the student protest.
We understand. It can be frustrating. About the time we learn how to deal with words, the grammarians toss in an exception to keep us on our toes. English has adopted so many words from the other languages—French, Greek, Eskimo, Latin, to name a few—that no single framework can cover all the mechanics of grammar. It is one of the unfortunate side effects of such a rich language as English.
But it is rich and it is worth learning grammar, for the young and old alike. Let me argue for grammar with a three-pronged argument.
For excellence. As Christians, we should strive for excellence in everything we do, including communicating, which also includes speaking and writing. The more important the piece of information, the more clearly it should be presented. Imagine a King James Bible with badly used commas and colons or misspelled words. It would be like carrying a 20 karat diamond in a Ziploc bag.
For clarity. Consider this sentence:
“I enjoy cooking my family and my pets.”
A perfectly grammatical sentence, other than the fact it would have you admitted to the loony bin in an instant. You might like this better:
“I enjoy cooking, my family, and my pets.”
At least now I might claim you as a relative. Battles have been lost with that kind of poor punctuation.
One of the finest places to see poor grammar is on billboards, road signs, and business logos.
On a road sign that mocks itself:
Please! 5 mph “No Dust”
On a construction company’s logo:
Mountain Storage Building’s
Who’s buildings? Is Mountain Storage a person?
On the website of sermon.net, attempting to get you signed up as a new member:
Risk free trial
Do you want me to risk a free trial or take a risk-free trial?
On and on we go. You can do better.
For public service. Creating a civilization is based upon a few shared assumptions. If everyone spoke and wrote to a different set of rules, communication would be much more difficult—if it existed at all. The more nuanced the agreement on how to communicate, the smoother the society. Therefore, raising a literate society is a civic duty. We can afford some slippage—losing some to entropy—but no point in losing more than we must. You didn’t realize that grammar has political implications, you say? Well, there you go.
The clearer the communication, the easier the thought is to grasp. Punctuation makes this easier. Understanding how sentences work makes it easier to break down ideas to manageable chunks. And once all of it has been internalized, we can, like Pablo Picasso said, “learn the rules like a pro so you can break them like an artist.”
Teach grammar; create citizens who communicate well and you will create a society who thinks well.