Grammar Is Overrated
Yeah. That’s the way I’m looking at you right now..
..lady that JUST emailed me that I “NEED” an editor.
Let me explain something to everyone reading before I piss off 99 percent of Medium..
I’m not saying grammar isn’t valuable. I’m not saying to toss out the rules of grammar/syntax like the garbage.
In fact, the first book I ever read before I seriously considered writing was “The Elements of Style” by Strunk & White… Because I knew how important it was to master your craft.
But to be honest with you.. grammar is sort of overrated.
Here’s why.
Nobody Gives A Damn Anymore
Okay so like, I’m probably going to, in the next 3–4 minutes, make a lot of inexcusable grammatical errors.
The kind that makes (make?) uptight grammar-nerds want to hurl a book at my head.
..because.. it… really pisses them off or something?
But you want to know what I’ve realized in my two years of self-publishing online?
There’s probably 5 people that have ever read my words online out of millions who actually gave a damn about my grammatical errors.
In fact, the other day I was reminded just how bad I was with grammar/syntax when an editor emailed me telling me how much I “needed” an editor.
They stopped justttt short of telling me my writing was atrocious.
I felt bad about it for a second but then realized something…
Why was this lady even emailing me in the first place?
Because she wanted me to hire her as an editor. Which means she was looking for work. Which means she wasn’t being adequately compensated for her talents.
Which means that
A. She’s really bad at finding work, or
B. Nobody gives much of a fuck about editing TO hire her.
In short.. we don’t NEED editors to tell us where we went wrong.
Because………………………………………………………………
Everyone Gets What You’re Saying Anyway
I was listening to somebody the other day on Youtube — a really smart man who I admire a lot — and he said something weird.
He said, “the data ARE really clear on this.”
Then he proceeded to say something else but I couldn’t pay attention because I was completely taken out of the video for a few seconds.
Thoughts started pouring into my head.
Why didn’t he say ‘the data IS’ instead of ‘the data ARE?’
Well, in short it’s because ‘data’ is not singular, it’s plural, and you need a verb, if I’m saying this correctly, to reflect that.
TRADITIONALLY, that’s correct. Nothing wrong with what he said..
But PRACTICALLY it wasn’t that useful because it took me out of the experience.
Sort of like if someone came on CNN and started talking like folks did in the 1700’s.
I mean, sure, everything they say might be grammatically accurate… but we wouldn’t hear a word of it because we’d be laughing the whole freaking time.
Does It Really Matter That Much?
That’s the crux of my argument here.
If writing was created for more accurate communication, then wouldn’t the litmus test for successful writing depend on the UNDERSTANDING of the recipient?
Not the accuracy with which we wielded our writing abilities?
Because the end goal isn’t writing accuracy per se — it’s that the reader UNDERSTANDS what we were trying to say.
And many folks would say that traditional grammar/syntax helps facilitate more accurate statements, to which I would say TRUE, but what I’m also saying is it doesn’t matter that much.
In the grand scheme, everybody who has ever read my writing understood what I was getting at because of context… because of the sentences above and below the one that may have contained an error.. because they’re not stupid.
We forget what writing was created for in the first place — simple communication.
That’s the reason I can have a perfectly fine conversation with 90% of English-challenged people from Southeast Asia.. Because I use common sense and oftentimes single words to understand what the heck they’re trying to say.
And I do most times.
One of my favorite writers on Medium is a French gentleman who, admittedly, doesn’t have the best command of English.
They make all types of spelling errors and grammar errors.
Yet I read every new post/word they publish — because I
- Get what they say pretty easily and
- Love their content.
I Don’t Hate Grammar
I love it. I studied it for a while. BUT I haven’t made much of an effort to brush up on my skills recently because I just don’t see any reason to.
If my audience gets what I say, then that’s what I want. I don’t need to be the greatest writer of all time.
I just need you to get what I’m saying.
And oddly enough, that’s accomplished way more often than not even with the worst of grammar.
That’s why I think it’s overrated.
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