Quote:
Originally Posted by teh603
I went to one of the most expensive Christian schools in town. Everything I listed earlier was taught as grammar instead of style. . . . Everything we were taught was to "prepare" us for writing AP exam essays and papers for higher academia- and probably induce the odd nervous breakdown here and there. Either way, functional creative writing was never on the table.
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That makes more sense to me than anything else you've said on this thread so far: The problem isn't grammar itself but the repression that can come from personality-undermining ideas of correctness.
For you, adherence to grammar as it was taught -- as a form of rigidity -- stood in the way of self-expression. Freeing yourself from that meant thinking as you were taught not to think. It meant "functioning creatively" as opposed to surrendering to repression.
That is a unique and particular reason for resisting inherited ideas of grammar-as-style. Like others have said, much of what you associate with grammar sounds far more like style to me, but it also sounds as though, when the two were taught together, they made you feel anxious and merged into a single wagging finger.
It also sounds as though remembering not to use "poetic devices" might have been your way of absorbing the tenet that one should not revert to poetic meter unconsciously (see famous examples of Dickens breaking into iambic pentameter for pages without knowing it).
But even in that case, the original idea was to cultivate awareness of the rhythm of one's sentences, not threaten students with dogma for lapsing into singsong.