Is Grammar Really That Important Any More?

[VydorScope]

Originally Posted by orlok

Ooooh. What a horrible thought. That we could end up with everything written in text speak, even newspapers and books. Where's a suicide booth when you need one?

Language changes with time, but at least to the best of my understanding, never that fast.

[Justin Nemo]

Originally Posted by VydorScope

Language changes with time, but at least to the best of my understanding, never that fast.

Well look at the period between 1930 and 1950 for example.

[Deidre Blue]

Yes. Yes, a thousand times yes, grammar is still important. The words we use may change, but the basic rules of grammar still apply. And, no, I'm not just saying that because my grade 12 creative writing teacher made us memorize the 13 comma rules backwards and forwards. I swear.

[charlessmall18]

I am an engineer by trade. As a youngster, I formed the habit of reading a book or two a week. Partway through my career, I got a job as a technical editor on a magazine for engineers. Cognitive psychologists have found the the high visual intelligence required for engineering often corellates strongly with mild-to-sever dyslexia. So engineers, in general, have a well-deserved reputation for being bad writers. At my magazine, they had a staff of young people with English (one has a PhD!), philosophy, journalism, and communications. Their job was to go over the copy of we engineers-turned-writers and "correct" our grammar and word usage. It was, in general, a sad experience. Consistantly, for example, they tried to "correct" my grammar when I used the subjunctive mood. One day I used the word "welter" in a headline and they all angrily ganged up on me, accusing me of using an obscure word that readers would not understand. Further, I noticed that the adverd, as a part of speech, had disappeared from their grammar. Technical copy often has a log-jam of nouns masquerading as adjectives piled up in front of the subject of a sentence. If I tried to use and adverb to modify an adjective or a past participle, they would always substitute the past participle. For example, "Freshly baked bread." always got changed to "Fresh baked bread." I am not quibbling about schoolmarmish nicities; their ability to cast sentences with precision simipy did not compare with that of us older engineers. And these young people were the ones who supposedly read!

[Namekuseijin]

sUr3 noT, KiDD!

gR4mNaR si f0R $Uxx3R$

[Indio777]

Depends on context/audience.

Much of web writing (Twitter, texting etc.) lends itself to "abbreviated" more informal language. As do some forums. Although, I notice that most posts here are more serious about writing well, some more "casual" expressions sometimes thrown in. Guess that is because we are all pretty serious readers, lol.

On the other hand, I don't want to see an article in a major newspaper written in "Newspeak." Or a technical manual. Or a novel. Part of what makes a good "literary" novel good is its use of decent grammar/sentence construction. The prose can "sing" sometimes.

Nor would I want to read a serious non-fiction work, say a history, in "Newspeak."

Is "Newspeak" the new term for more casual writing? To me that term reminds me of "Newspeak" in Orwell;s 1984. Not a positive association ......

Perhaps I am showing my age.

Not that "vernacular" writing does not have its place. For example, I am thinking of some of Scots or US Southern writing. But the terms used are generally long-standing, accepted terms. But it seems to me as if it is meant to evoke a sense of time/place. That can add to the richness.

I think being able to write well from a grammatical and spelling standpoint is good discipline for our brains.

I could go on, bt i wll stp.

Another good post, Justin Nemo. Thanks.

[Pulpmeister]

Too many people think grammar is a set of arbitrary rules pounded into their skulls at school.

It isn't; grammar is the way language works, its very structure, integral to its meaning.

Of course there are two dialects of a language: the spoken and the written. The grammars are not the same. Spoken language relies on many cues -- intonation, gesture, expression, pause, and many others -- to clarify meaning, remove ambiguities, and enhance, which are not possible in the written language.

Texting and other quick communications are often dialogues--polylogues??--where confusion can be clarified in real time.

A printed (or digital paper) book therefore relies of "formal" grammar to make sure that what is down on the page is what you meant to say, and that the reader will get that self-same meaning.

For a writer, language is the tool. If you don't know how to use it, you're in trouble from the start. You can completey fail to convey your intended meaning, and frustrate your reader(s) to the extent that you drive them away.

You can write simply and clearly; or you can write in baroque or ormulu styles; but if you write unintelligibly, you have failed.

And if there are any typos above, it's Friday evening where I am and I am enjoying my third Aussie beer.

[Justin Nemo]

Originally Posted by Pulpmeister

Too many people think grammar is a set of arbitrary rules pounded into their skulls at school.

It isn't; grammar is the way language works, its very structure, integral to its meaning.

Of course there are two dialects of a language: the spoken and the written. The grammars are not the same. Spoken language relies on many cues -- intonation, gesture, expression, pause, and many others -- to clarify meaning, remove ambiguities, and enhance, which are not possible in the written language.

Texting and other quick communications are often dialogues--polylogues??--where confusion can be clarified in real time.

A printed (or digital paper) book therefore relies of "formal" grammar to make sure that what is down on the page is what you meant to say, and that the reader will get that self-same meaning.

For a writer, language is the tool. If you don't know how to use it, you're in trouble from the start. You can completey fail to convey your intended meaning, and frustrate your reader(s) to the extent that you drive them away.

You can write simply and clearly; or you can write in baroque or ormulu styles; but if you write unintelligibly, you have failed.

And if there are any typos above, it's Friday evening where I am and I am enjoying my third Aussie beer.

Ormulu style, is that what they call gilding the lilly?

[orlok]

Originally Posted by Justin Nemo

Ormulu style, is that what they call gilding the lilly?

Um, I was wondering about the too. Even looked it up, and could only find references to applying gold to bronze objects. I'm sure there's some kind of metaphor hidden in there, but I couldn't find the reference in terms of the writing craft.

[Herbie Jackson]

[QUOTE=Stitchawl;2054826]No, Betty. I actually do believe that people all too often pay more attention to the grammar and spelling than to the content. Look how many here have said that when they see a mistake will either get turned off to what is being said, or become 'copy editor' and try to fix it, at that point completely ignoring the content because of the mistakes.

Case in point, I had a friend who owned a large Recreational Vehicle company. I was helping him out for a few months during 'High Season,' and due to injury of his shop foreman, we needed a new good, well trained mechanic. We took dozens of resumes, but none of them contained the qualifications needed for that job.

Then one fellow presented a CV that was nothing less than fantastic! I checked all the references and he received glowing reports from every past employer and training school. The fellow was a married, down-to-earth church goer, with no bad habits, AND he was a Top Mechanic! Unfortunately, he couldn't spell and his grammar was terrible. My friend got so hung up in correcting the resume for spelling and grammar errors, that he paid no attention at all to the fact that for this particular job, the fellow was perfectly suitable. Granted, had he been applying for a job as a copywriter there would be no question that he should NOT get the job. But for someone who crawls under an RV and adjusts the breaks, ending his written sentences with a preposition should NOT have made a difference.

Unfortunately, the owner of the shop was one of the people who get caught up in the form and not in the content. He lost out on getting a model employee who could do the needed work simply because he paid more attention to spelling and grammar rather than content.

So, no... I wasn't playing Devil's Advocate. I believe that there is a need to teach students the proper basics, but then too, there is a need to look beyond them as well.


Betty?...I'd rather be a Betty than a twat!

[Penforhire]

Cormac McCarthy is an example of a writer who successfully breaks the rules. But you have to think he knew them well before he broke them. I myself don't agree with his wanton disregard for punctuation but he's got awards while I've just got MobileRead karma to show for it.

[Prestidigitweeze]

Originally Posted by LuvReadin

http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/book...eed-publishers

Horowitz makes an excellent point about levels of editing that aren't simply reducible to proofreading.

Here in the Immense Pippin, we've been grousing for yahs about the absence of proofreaders at The New York Times. However, the editor of that cabbage corsage is savvy enough to hire copy editors, which is why said corsage tends not to consist of unreadable swill.

When I've worked for publishers and been involved in editing other people's novels, we were all quite concerned about repeated words (at different points in the paragraph and page, not just adjacently), inconsistencies (which have included the names of the main characters changing halfway through the book), redundancies, cliches and circumlocutions.

Most of the time, we were also vigilant about drastically unimportant scenes, violations of the tone, distracting or overdone sound patterns (unless poetic prose was both intended and effective), unnecessary asides and soporific pacing.

Readers might not think editors are needed, but their reading life is certainly better for editors' work. We need to find ways to involve professional editors in self-publishing without that simply becoming another way for self-styled entrepreneurs to hoodwink the abnormally ungifted into paying for incompetence.

Even so, those whose work hasn't benefited from editing can still find ways to improve it. One of these is for people to read their fiction aloud in public. I can't tell you how many times I've thought a story of mine was perfect, read it to people, and realized that one third of it was unnecessary and another was hopelessly indirect.

Personally, I believe in writing about what's truly resonant for me and not second-guessing what's likely to sell (we tend to pick novelists for our literary magazine's book publishing imprint in the same way that I choose what to write). I also believe in not dumbing down the work to suit some imaginary reader.

But refining one's style and storytelling is hardly dumbing the work down, any more than trimming away the unnecessary is runaway populist pandering. These are things one should do for the work no matter how personal or peculiar; for the presumed reader no matter how supposedly enamored of difficult work. Failing to do those things is irresponsible whether your name is John le Carré, Charles Bukowski, Robert Coover or Samuel Beckett.

[VydorScope]

I think what it boils down to is that "yes" does not work as an absolute because there are different levels.

A twitter post where you are limited to 140 chars, for example. There grammar flies out the window in an attempt to communicate under that restriction.

A place like LOLCATS where grammar and etc is intentionally blown off for impact.

A PHD thesis paper needs absolutely perfect English, but under whatever rules that thesis falls under (for example my grad school papers need to adhere to Turabian, 7th edition).

In between there is a wide range. Comes down to knowing your audience and purpose for writing.

[Prestidigitweeze]

Originally Posted by Penforhire

Cormac McCarthy is an example of a writer who successfully breaks the rules. But you have to think he knew them well before he broke them. I myself don't agree with his wanton disregard for punctuation but he's got awards while I've just got MobileRead karma to show for it.

It isn't that McCarthy disregards punctuation. It's that he uses it (often by avoiding it) in a rigorously idiosyncratic way. That's very different from being unable to use punctuation correctly.

Think of it as you would a painter moving from a traditionally representational style to German expressionism. They haven't forgotten how to paint anatomically correct figures. They've assigned different proportions to the figures to express different insights and emotions. To say they'd forgotten anatomy would be like saying Samuel Beckett had lost the ability to write in complete sentences.

[Pulpmeister]

Baroque and ormulu are about as far away as you can get from Mies van der Rohe and Ikea. Metaphors of course.

Of course, when you're within quotes, writing dialogue, you can freely mess about with grammar as part of the technique of differentiating character through speech patterns.

And if you're writing in the first person, as in The Moon is a Harsh Mistress cited above, your character's grammar can be less than perfect too. Nevetheless, your intended meaning has to be clear to the reader, or else you're wasting your time--and the readers'. That's the function of grammar.

Heinlein, who had no problem writing correctly, created a complete Lunar dialect and wrote the entire book in it, a considerable feat; but nevetheless kept it clear and unambiguous throughout. He did that, not by torturing the language, but by the use of frequent non-English words and phrases, and by omitting many words which were not essential to meaning, eg, instead of the sentence "It was beautiful." he wrote "Was beautiful.". However, because the underlying grammar was right, the reader happily fills in the correct missing words unconsciously because there's never any doubt what the right words are.

If you are writing for a traditional publisher, an good editor will pick up errors and ambiguities and refer them back to the author for clarification. But if there are so many that the text is a mess, the whole lot comes back with a thanks, but no thanks, message.

But if you are self-publishing, whether on paper or digitally, all your errors are there for the reader to see--and judge.

I have one paperback book which I treasure because it's a wonderful how-not-to example. There are major typographical errors, grammatical bungles and spelling mistakes on almost every page (and I am not exaggerating). It was called "The Money Trail" and was published by a small press in the Channel Islands, quite likely the authors own imprint.