I am a self-described and proud “grammar diva.” I know the difference between a verb and an adverb, and I know when to use “whom” instead of “who.” I’m also The Current’s copy editor, which means I get to enjoy spending my days making sure commas are in the right place.
So you’d think that I’d be one of those grammar snobs who corrects my Facebook friends’ statuses and glares at people when they use nonstandard words like “irregardless” or “thusly” or say double negatives such as “I didn’t do nothing.”
Not so.
I used to be a fastidious grammarphobe, but as I’ve explored my passion for writing, I’ve learned that the rules can be broken once in a while, depending on the context of the writing and its audience.
Each medium of communication and writing genre has its own conventions and style rules that people expect to see when they read these mediums. The Current adheres to the rules of the Associated Press Stylebook. On Twitter, it’s acceptable to use incomplete sentences and shorts phrases that you wouldn’t use in a business email. When you’re texting, you’re allowed to abbreviate long phrases or write “Were r u?” but you wouldn’t abbreviate words in an informal blog post. The point is to communicate effectively; as long as the intended audience understands your message, you did just that.
Because language continues to change, grammarians — those who study and write about grammar — don’t always agree on all details of usage and grammar, and even the standard grammar rules can’t always tie English down. Unlike French, English has no official academy of smart people cackling with delight as they correct grammar and usage errors with a giant red Sharpie. The truth is, many rules are subjective at times. Some people are irked when “literally” is used as an intensifier in sentences such as “I’ve literally been waiting forever to watch this movie” because “literally” means “actually.” But these people don’t realize that “literally” has been used figuratively since the 1800s.
Similarly, many people object to splitting infinitives with other words; for example, some say “to sit quietly” is correct while “to quietly sit” is incorrect. The “never split an infinitive” rule was borrowed from Latin and grammarians have been arguing about it for centuries. Some people still adhere to it, but the rule is now widely considered defunct. After all, without the split infinitive, the Enterprise crew wouldn’t have been able “to boldly go where no man has gone before.”
Another example of our changing language is the recent evolution of the word “because.” Normally a preposition, Internet users have started using “because” as a conjunction. This means that people are writing only one or two words after “because” instead of a group of words with a subject and verb. In fact, the American Dialect Society chose “because” as its word of year for 2013, proving that the Internet’s “because reasons” is the new “because I said so.”
The society’s New Words Committee Chair Ben Zimmer said, “No longer does because have to be followed by of or a full clause. Now one often sees tersely worded rationales like ‘because science’ or ‘because reasons.’ You might not go to a party ‘because tired.’”
But these rules, and even punctuation and spelling rules, are fluid and change from genre to genre. Would you use the popular Internet usage of “because” in an academic paper or your resume? No. Would you use “literally” as an intensifier in a grant proposal or use a split infinitive in a press release? No. Would you use all these while talking with friends or writing a YouTube comment? Absolutely. Because context.
People shouldn’t snap at others for using incorrect grammar or saying a nonstandard word. There’s no need to bemoan the death of the English language; English and its rules have been changing for hundreds of years and there’s no way to stop it.
If grammar snobs channeled this negative grammatical energy into observing and learning how people write in different mediums and genres, they would see that English is dynamic and changing, able to adapt to any style or situation. The grammar police siren shouldn’t go off as often or as harshly as it does. The siren should go off not for chiding others but for learning and celebrating the little things that make writing effective and make our language beautifully adaptable.
