As a follow-up to my last post about ditching my accountant on the basis of poor punctuation, I’d like to share an amusing post from the Grammarly Blog which will appeal to a lot of my friends (and family) who love language and who champion the proper use of grammar.
I freely admit that I am one of those people who likes to point out the mistakes of newsreaders and radio announcers to anyone within earshot and I fully appreciate that it can be very annoying. It’s nearly as irritating as me correcting the spelling on my husband’s shopping list.
However, those of you who do share my passion and interest in grammar will really appreciate the Grammarly blog. Think about signing up for their weekly newsletter, it’s fun and informative and a great way to learn.
Another great blogger and podcaster is Mignon Fogarty, also known as Grammar Girl. Grammar girl posts short articles on various aspects of grammar and punctuation. Here she is doing a TED talk on why language changes.
Where does this love of language come from?
I’ve had a lot of discussions with my sisters over the years about where our love of language comes from and we all agree that we should thank our mother. Although she left school at a fairly young age, both she and my grandmother were great readers and they passed this on to all the children in the family. We all think it’s normal to visit the library at least once a fortnight and come home with an armful of books. I get slightly anxious when the pile of unread books on my bedside table dwindles to less than two.
This doesn’t explain why we are passionate about grammar in particular. Many avid readers don’t know or care about proper sentence construction and modern writers are much less concerned about the rules of grammar. To be honest, I couldn’t really tell you much about the rules of grammar either. Most of what I know has been learnt by being constantly corrected (thanks Mum) when I was a child. This is the way all the children in my family learnt that it wasn’t okay to say “I been to the shops”.
Good grammar = clear communication
I think that grammar does matter and I’d like to borrow these words from the author William Bradshaw to explain why.
Grammar, regardless of the country or the language, is the foundation for communication — the better the grammar, the clearer the message, the more likelihood of understanding the message’s intent and meaning. That is what communication is all about.
I couldn’t agree more.
Margaret Moon 