how about feel you Grammar – do?

[Rich.]

How do you feel about grammar?

A conversation over in The Laboratory got me thinking: why is it that some writers love grammar while some break out in a cold sweat at its merest mention? @RK Capps, in that Lab thread, quotes writing guru Dwight V Swain talking about when things go wrong:

Correct grammar becomes a fetish.

Swain, Dwight V.. Techniques of the Selling Writer (p. 32). University of Oklahoma Press. Kindle Edition.​

And I'd agree with that. One doesn't want to be a slave to standard use when one is trying to be creative.

To be clear, I'm not suggesting that anyone in @RK Capps's Lab thread is breaking out in a cold sweat. But it's certainly true that across the internet, wherever writers are to be found, much vitriol is spat about the pros and cons of knowing your grammar.

I'm very much on the side of knowing the rules (the "standard uses", to be more precise) so they can be consciously and creatively broken when required. A carpenter knows all about wood, right? But equally, there are plenty of wonderful musicians who don't read music. But that's mixing concepts, isn't it? Wood is the stuff of carpentry, whereas written music is not the stuff of music – sound is. So my analogy is flawed. Language is the stuff of stories. And grammar is – what? An imposed set of arbitrary rules, or a democratically-arrived-at agreement on how to make ourselves intelligible to one another? I suspect it's both.

What do you think?

How do you feel about grammar?

 

[RK Wallis]

To be clear, I'm not suggesting that anyone in @RK Capps's Lab thread is breaking out in a cold sweat. But it's certainly true that across the internet, wherever writers are to be found, much vitriol is spat about the pros and cons of knowing your grammar.

I second @Rich.. I only used grammar as example in my Lab thread. I wasn't calling anyone out. Sometimes grammar can be the harness on a story. Writers need to let the reins go and set their story free. Imagine a writer riding bareback. The writer needs to know something about riding aka grammar (and definitely the horse aka story). Readers want stories ... how else did 50 Shades or The Da Vinci Code become so popular? Because readers don't care about grammar. They care about story.

And Agent Pete understands that. It's why he's taken the time to develop this: https://colony.litopia.com/threads/...-giving-and-receiving-writing-critiques.5798/.

So, for me, grammar is a tool and if it serves the story. I'll use it. If it doesn't, I need to break the chains of perfectionism and break the rules.

 

[JohnBertel]

Grammar has a bad reputation because so many of those who preach grammar criticise other people for not being able to follow some arbitrary rules that they know, but you, you lazy pleb, clearly have not been taught.

I like Michael D.C. Drout because he either explains why there are good, practical reasons for grammatical constructions (like using pronouns instead of repeating someone's name again and again) or, in case the rule seems irrational, how the historical evolution of language resulted in the rule (like why some verbs are regular other strong). Granted, he can be a bit too "funny, funny" but I like his approach.

The Modern Scholar

Check out this great listen on Audible.com. Who eats shoots and leaves? A panda? Or a gunman at a restaurant? The answer to this all depends on - you guessed it - grammar. In the third part of his extraordinary Way with Words series, Professor Drout continues to explore humanity's intimate...

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[KateESal]

Speaking as someone who teaches English and also creative writing, I would say that to an adept writer, grammar is like the Pirate's Code: a set of guidelines.

It's useful to have a generally agreed standard, especially when you're learning the rudiments of how to effectively use a language.

But language is forever evolving, both in terms of its vocabulary and in the way it is constructed (the grammar). The grammar of English has been written down and codified, but humans are innately creative, and we love finding different ways of using the tools we have: language being no exception.

Deliberate grammar "misuse" can also be effective as an attention-grabber, and ultimately influential if enough people adopt it:

"I'm lovin' it!"
"That is SO not what I meant!"
I was stood by the bar, when this man said to me...

As a writer, you get a feel for what works and what doesn't. Sentence fragments aren't really allowed in grammatical terms, but we writers use them a lot because they add emphasis, or help create a mood.

Sometimes, however, your reading brain gets snagged on something and the answer can be found in a grammatical glitch.
Reading the first couple of pages of my YA novel, The Face That Pins You, I realised that something was bothering me about a particular sentence, but it wasn't immediately obvious what it was. After a bit of analysis, I noticed that I had used a split infinitive. I don't usually give a monkey's toenail about split infinitives, but on this occasion it was making the sentence read awkwardly. That awkwardness disappeared once I fixed the split infinitive.

As a journalist, I realised that you could mix singulars and plurals in some cases, but not in others eg:

The government has announced.... (preferable to the government have announced)
The local council is offering a new bus pass.... (better than "...are offering....")

A lot of people wouldn't notice if you got those two wrong, but some would notice and find it annoying, so it's worth getting them right.

On the other hand,

Manchester United are playing Everton tonight... (instead of "...is playing...")
Rage Against The Machine have pulled out of the festival... (instead of "...has pulled out...")

Sports teams and musical bands just sound weird if you refer to them as singular entities, even though that is grammatically correct. I've always argued that this usage has an implied "the members of...<insert team or band>..." to justify it.

Anyway. I'll shut up now.

TLR: Grammar is useful, but sometimes unnecessarily restrictive.

 

[izi 出久]

I read the title of this thread at least 7 times before I realized there was a slight issue with it… but then is there????

 

[KateESal]

Another thing about grammar is that grammatical constructions which are considered incorrect in British English have become the norm in other varieties of English: eg Indian English or US English.

Being overly prescriptive about English grammar can border on bigotry, sometimes.

 

[Hannah F]

There are some grammatical errors that bug me: When people randomly use commas or use them instead of full stops or semi-colons. When people use semi-colons instead of commas. In these cases, the writer most likely doesn't know the rules. Cases where the writer knows the rules but chooses to break them are usually to cause greater impact or because the character speaks that way. These don't jar my reading. I think that is why it's very important to learn the "pirates' code" - so you can adhere to it or veer from it deliberately.

 

[Mel L]

Speaking as someone who teaches English and also creative writing, I would say that to an adept writer, grammar is like the Pirate's Code: a set of guidelines.

It's useful to have a generally agreed standard, especially when you're learning the rudiments of how to effectively use a language.

But language is forever evolving, both in terms of its vocabulary and in the way it is constructed (the grammar). The grammar of English has been written down and codified, but humans are innately creative, and we love finding different ways of using the tools we have: language being no exception.

Deliberate grammar "misuse" can also be effective as an attention-grabber, and ultimately influential if enough people adopt it:

"I'm lovin' it!"
"That is SO not what I meant!"
I was stood by the bar, when this man said to me...

As a writer, you get a feel for what works and what doesn't. Sentence fragments aren't really allowed in grammatical terms, but we writers use them a lot because they add emphasis, or help create a mood.

Sometimes, however, your reading brain gets snagged on something and the answer can be found in a grammatical glitch.
Reading the first couple of pages of my YA novel, The Face That Pins You, I realised that something was bothering me about a particular sentence, but it wasn't immediately obvious what it was. After a bit of analysis, I noticed that I had used a split infinitive. I don't usually give a monkey's toenail about split infinitives, but on this occasion it was making the sentence read awkwardly. That awkwardness disappeared once I fixed the split infinitive.

As a journalist, I realised that you could mix singulars and plurals in some cases, but not in others eg:

The government has announced.... (preferable to the government have announced)
The local council is offering a new bus pass.... (better than "...are offering....")

A lot of people wouldn't notice if you got those two wrong, but some would notice and find it annoying, so it's worth getting them right.

On the other hand,

Manchester United are playing Everton tonight... (instead of "...is playing...")
Rage Against The Machine have pulled out of the festival... (instead of "...has pulled out...")

Sports teams and musical bands just sound weird if you refer to them as singular entities, even though that is grammatically correct. I've always argued that this usage has an implied "the members of...<insert team or band>..." to justify it.

Anyway. I'll shut up now.

TLR: Grammar is useful, but sometimes unnecessarily restrictive.

The plural usages for groups sound incredibly off to North American ears. Took me ages to be able to use them in written English for clients who want UK grammar and spelling but now I can 'swing' both ways - ha ha. In the end, you need to speak to your audience in the language they understand.

 

[Jake E]

Incorrect grammar is only noteworthy or noticeable when it makes reading something more work than pleasure.

There's a certain standard that readers expect. If I went to a shop to buy a bike, I'd expect it to have two round wheels and handlebars. It's familiar. I can get straight on and go.
The same is true for writing. I expect my books to follow certain rules so I can read them effortlessly. I don't want to have to learn to ride a unicycle.

More than that, Grammar gets meaning across. By writing incorrectly, your meaning isn't clear.

That being said. Breaking grammar rules for effect should be encouraged, but it should be deliberate and purposeful. Most of the writing should adhere to the rules.

Disclaimer: the above views are those of Jake and Jake alone and should not be taken as any kind of authority on the matter.

 

[STUART KAY]

As a novelist, the way I feel about grammar in fiction is it's there to be both respected and abused, according to circumstances, point of view, and mood of the moment. The abuse should not be indiscriminate, but pertinent. 'Baddest' instead of 'worst' is a good example of abuse, which I've used on a couple of occasions. When you're describing a person who's the worst of the worst, 'baddest' seems more appropriate somehow.
I wouldn't include punctuation in the abuse though. Not that there aren't plenty of examples.

 

[CageSage]

The grammar of English has been written down and codified,

Correction: the grammar of English has been codified based on Latin grammar because English is so many combinations of so many other languages and nothing could be found to constrain it.

Not sure if the tongue is in the cheek or not ...
but in my opinion, the purpose of grammar is to make the language clear and precise and unambiguous to the reader - therefore, a good tool for writers, but not the only tool in the shed, especially as it's a tack-on from something else to try to make it feel more stable than rambunctious. Occasionally, rambunctious is the only way to play.

 

[CarolMS]

I believe good--or perhaps I should say good enough--grammar and punctuation (which I see as two separate things) are essential foundations for writing, but the rules can be broken when the writer is clear about why as pertains to the story or whatever is being written. To me it is a lot like jazz improvization. You can't really improvise well unless you know the melody in the first place, the notes and the rhythms, the chord changes and the harmonies, etc, so as to hold it all in a kind of free-form relationship and then bring it all back to the composition's heart when it's time to come home. I agree that "story trumps all," but I admit I do have a hard time reading something with substandard craft, but that may just derive from my personal need to keep working at doing it as well as I can. Perfection isn't required, but we can all strive to learn and have our work adequately edited and at least proofread. Sloppy writers who publish before their books are ready not only show they have a lot yet to learn but also a lack of professionalism.

Of course, a narrator's voice and writer's style can affect how grammar and punctuation are handled. As I said above, the rules can be broken when the writer knows why s/he is doing so and handles it with consistency in the story. And needless to say, I'm sure, it is definitely okay to break rules in dialogue, which should be written as the character speaks, even if the grammar is god-awful or whatever.

On a slightly different angle of this kind of craft discussion, I am reading another novel right now that has broken the rules regarding how dialogue is presented. This time--in the new and debut novel Adelaide by Genevieve Wheeler--all the dialogue is written in italics without any punctuation. It's not the first novel I've read with this approach, and once again, it really irritates me. There seems to be a lot of this kind of tinkering with the traditional rules of punctuation and formatting of dialogue in novels, and it always feels like a gimmick to me, as though writers are trying too hard to be "modern" or "experimental." It doesn't make the book easier to read (in fact, it makes me sometimes have to figure out who is saying what), nor, in my opinion, does it look better on the page, particularly when there is a lot of dialogue. No italics or dialogue punctuation at all is even more confusing. I see so many novels written as such these days. And I just have to ask, WHY? The other thing I'm finding irritating in this current book, Adelaide, is the author's tendency to keep adding little asides in parenthesis, to explain, to foretell, etc.--all unnecessary and, I feel, a sign of insufficient substantive editing. Ah, well, maybe it's just me.

 

[Rich.]

A pleasing consensus seems to have emerged. A consensus we might sum up as:

In service of story, a solid bed of standard grammatical usage is desirable, from which, when required, creative non-standards might grow.​

Cheers, m'dears!