Grammar Is All We Have

I’ve been wanting to start a series on my blog that will allow me to gush about my love for grammar for a while now, and I think I’ve finally figured out how I want to do it. (Particularly, so it’s not dull beyond belief for my readers...hopefully.) 

The definition of grammar I’ll be focusing on is as follows: “the whole system and structure of a language or of languages in general, usually taken as consisting of syntax and morphology (including inflections) and sometimes also phonology and semantics.”

Ahh, there’s so much there! System and structure, syntax and morphology, inflections, phonology, semantics - I’ll even toss in some connotations and denotations, and maybe some diagramming! Okay, I’m getting ahead of myself, but this is exciting. Grammar is incredible. 

However, the trouble with learning grammar is that we often know when a sentence sounds wrong or right, but we usually cannot say why. (It’s why teachers often tell their students to read a paper aloud while editing, and why reading is so important. Fill yourself with correct grammar, and bad grammar becomes too obvious to ignore.) 

Additionally, negative examples are often the best way to express a positive. It’s like learning about God - we can say what He is not often more easily than we can say what He is. Or the truth - if we know everything around it is false, it’s a little easier to narrow down what is true. (Of course, this isn’t always the case, but it’s how I think about grammar.) 

The rules of grammar are infuriating and wonderful. They don’t make sense, and yet, they’re the only things that help us make sense. I have this argument with Tucker often. (Arguing is our idea of fun sometimes.)  He’s a philosophy guy and according to him, grammar is one of the big things philosophers hate. It gets in the way, apparently. 

His words, “Do you know how hard it is to convey an idea that no one’s ever had before? Grammar ruins it every time.” 

I shot back: “Grammar is the only reason you can even get the idea out in the first place, otherwise it doesn’t make any sense. Grammar is all we have!” 

A little dramatic, I know. And we still don’t agree (which just means we get to argue about it some more), but I’m standing by my statement, wholeheartedly. I think a lot of people feel the same way as Tucker, though they probably wouldn’t have the same reason. For many, grammar gets in the way - but only if you don’t know the rules, how to use them, and (the best part) how to break them. 

So to further make my case to Tucker and to everyone else that grammar is glorious, I’ll be gushing about grammar in the form of bad examples from my own writing. Maybe a phrase, a sentence, an entire paragraph - all of it bad and in desperate need of a grammar lesson or two. 

I got the idea while reading through an old fiction story of mine from 2017 -- goodness, it’s embarrassing. While I could cringe at the entire thing, here’s the particularly terrible sentence that sparked this series idea: 

“Our campus was slightly winding and twisting and at every slight turn, I caught a glimpse of Daisy’s face and she looked slightly pained.”

Bruh. Tell me why I used the word “slightly” three times in one sentence?? I have two writing degrees…? Not to mention the sentence itself is just bad all at once; not the worst I’ve ever written, but still. Lifeless, repetitive. Terrible. 

Now what’s interesting about this sentence is that it technically makes grammatical sense. The subjects are there, the verbs are there, and they are all in agreement. The clauses, both dependent and independent, are appropriately set off by a comma. It’s a bit of a run-on, but that’s more of a stylistic choice rather than an actual rule, especially since the subject-verb-comma rules are all followed. It’s technically correct...

But it still sucks. Ah, the beauty of grammar. So how would I fix it? And why? And why is this so interesting to me, especially the nitty-gritty parts?

Well, I guess you’ll just have to stick around and see, because that’ll be the Topic Sentence of my first official post in this series. 

Like I said, grammar is all we have, and I’ll be damned if I let anyone forget it.

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