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>While I don't waste time with bickering posts over grammar
issues, I
>do feel strongly enough about this subject to make this
posting. If
>we truly believe we are professional writers (and I do) then
let's show it
>with _everything_ we write.
The point isn't whether grammar is important. I think you can
take for granted that most subscribers to this list do their best
to write well, and wince when they make a public mistake. The
point is that the importance of grammar can easily be
exaggerated.
For one thing, a document that contains a few grammatical
mistakes may be embarrassing to the writer and possibly confusing
to the reader, but often it may still more or less succeed in
getting its point across. It isn't the best possible
communication (which, obviously, iis what we should aim for), but
it is still roughly successful. To worry too much about grammar
is to get lost in process when what matters is results.
For another, is grammar any more important than accuracy or order
of information? Than readability and legibility? Any writing
requires balancing a number of factors, so why should grammar be
considered more important than any other? I suspect that one
reason that people harp on grammar is that it's easier to
perceive than some of these other issues. But the main reason, I
suspect, is that the unimaginative way that grammar tends to be
taught in school leaves everyone with the impression that it is
an orderly, rule-based subject, that can be discussed in
either-or terms: either a usage is correct, or it isn't. However,
as countless discussions on this list have shown, grammar isn't
really that simply when you get out of the classroom.
Most importantly, harping on grammar often becomes a way to score
cheap points - a sort of ad hominem attack that accuses the
person who makes the mistake of ignorance. When used in this way
(and please note that I am NOT singling out anybody here),
grammar stops being a tool for communication and starts being a
tool for power and control. Maybe I've read too much George
Orwell, or seen too much, but I consider the use of lanaguage for
anything other than communication to be a perversion of its
purpose.
--
Bruce Byfield, Outlaw Communications
3015 Aries Place, Burnaby, BC V37 7E8, Canada
bbyfield -at- axionet -dot- com 604.421.7189
"To Newgate Jail they took him, the Ranters' dream was dead,
He had no taste for martyrdom, 'I will recant,' he said,
'I banished sin, but I have erred, it cannot be denied,
That these are sins: greed, tyranny, hypocrisy, and pride.'"
-Leon Rosselson, "Abezier Coppe"
