your Under a rest
Why good grammar should matter

Its fair to say that once you’ve been a teacher (presumably a good one, and one that deals with words and not just numbers) your brain get a permanent switch into spelling and grammar check. Rogue or absent commas spin and spit, incorrect choices on “your/you’re” fizz with fury, and “would OF…” — that just fucking burns your eyes.
Part of the problem is that we have a blurred line of acceptability. I’m really quite happy writing casually, overusing the passive voice in my day to day chatter (see, I even ignored the hyphens I should have used then…but there is no damn way I was going to write “should of…”).
Some errors are typos, which is a different matter altogether. I have noticed over the past couple of years that I repeat a common typo of accidentally tapping a space after a “t” in a word. For example, my typing includes “t he.” That’s bad typing technique. I’ve never learnt to type properly, I just type quickly and look at the screen simply as a matter of habit and muscle memory on a QWERTY keyboard. I type quickly as a result of doing a LOT of typing, and not as a result of touch-typing well.
But typos are not my enemy. The tolerance of lazy writing is. For example, there is never any excuse to have the letter “I” when used to refer to oneself, on its own, as a lower case “i” unless you are just fucking lazy. MS Word, most internet sites, and most mobile phones even have the basic programming to make [space]i[space] auto-correct into a capital letter. But even if it doesn’t happen, you can’t leave it.
Can you?
Seriously?
You make your writing look like it was written by a teenager with a phone from the 90s. Using the wrong “to/too/two” is amazing, too. Many people claim it as a typo — the “o” not registering right. Nah — sorry, it really is quite easy to spot when it is a typo error and not a real error.
I am aware that moaning about punctuation is not a new thing. I am not just doing that. I am taking my patriotic duty as a Brit to a new level: I am moaning about moaning about grammar. Frankly, if you are too lazy-ass to write properly, or at least avoid the major clangers of errors, then you just have to put up with my moaning. It’s the same as I have to put up with that stale stench of a cannabis user on the bus, or the droll ear-bashing you get from a crap mobile phone drone of hip-hop. I have to put up with the chav mothers who totally ignore their children as the stare constantly, for 30 minutes or more, into the mobile phones.
There are all these other irritating things in life. And to all people saying: “Where do you get off, correcting my writing like that?” I simply reply: “Where do you get off, making me read your shit like that?” I love writing, I love language, and I value it. Just because someone else doesn’t value it doesn’t mean that I should reduce myself to their level. We should defend our language, and there is a damn good reason why.
We live in a world where language gets us into a whole load of trouble when we are not careful with it. Lies and misquotes can cause wars; unfettered and unchecked comments can ruin lives; broken promises break hearts; and the rhyme “sticks and stones…” is one of the biggest horse-shit lies ever uttered to children.
If I go to see the Chelsea flower show, I want to smell the roses . I don’t want to smell the manure in the compost. Treat your writing like a garden: let me appreciate the beauty, and don’t show me the shit.
CW
