Grammar vs. Usage

Guest post by Kim­berly Wil­son.

Language is a tricky, sticky, icky thing, infamous for having too many rules that nobody follows anyway — and especially so in the English language.

Your sophomore English teacher counted points off your mid-term paper for mistakes that your boss’s boss makes every day in e-mails to the office, and the Oxford comma keeps appearing and disappearing without any apparent repercussions whatsoever!

Is it an epidemic of illiteracy? Does it matter at all?

The answer to both questions is, more or less: not really.

There are, of course, hard and fast rules that should be adhered to when writing or speaking English; adjectives must modify nouns, subjects must agree with verbs, and so on.  But there is also a line that should be drawn in the sand for so-called grammar Nazis and other annoying perfectionists.

In linguistic circles, this line is called usage.  There is grammar, and there is usage.  Common usage is frequently  at odds with mechanical conventions, often because speaking “properly” is inconvenient, awkward, or pretentious, and people want to simplify their lives and their speaking habits.

At its root, language is a tool used for communicating ideas from one person to another.  When you ask someone where your pen is, and they tell you they “don’t know where it’s at,” are you completely ignorant of what they were trying to say? No. You know exactly what they meant. It might not have been “grammatically correct,” but it got the point across, and the result was a successful communicative event.

Different situations call for different degrees of precision and formality, but for the most part, you can reserve impeccable grammar for scholarly essays, resumes, interviews, and other important junctures.  Let language serve its purpose, and you’ll be happier, healthier, and generally more well-liked.

Byline:
Kimberly Wilson is from accredited online colleges, she writes on topics including career, education, student life, college life, home improvement, time management etc.

Famous Authors on Grammar

Guest post by Erinn Stam.

Not all writers have a firm grasp of grammar — that’s why there are editors. But most writers do have plenty of opinions about the role of grammar in language and writing. Here are some of the best quotes from famous writers about grammar:

• “Grammar is a piano I play by ear. All I know about grammar is its power.” ~ Joan Didion
• “Grammar, which knows how to control even kings.” ~ Moliere
• “I demand that my books be judged with utmost severity, by knowledgeable people who know the rules of grammar and of logic, and who will seek beneath the footsteps of my commas the lice of my thought in the head of my style.” ~ Louis Aragon
• “I don’t know the rules of grammar… If you’re trying to persuade people to do something, or buy something, it seems to me you should use their language, the language they use every day, the language in which they think. We try to write in the vernacular.” ~ David Ogilvy
• “The greater part of the worlds’ troubles are due to questions of grammar.” ~ Michel de Montaigne
• “Grammar is the grave of letters.” ~ Elbert Hubbard
• “It is well to remember that grammar is common speech formulated.” ~ William Somerset Maugham
• “Writing is an act of faith, not a trick of grammar.” ~ E.B. White
• “When a thought takes one’s breath away, a grammar lesson seems an impertinence.” ~ Thomas W. Higginson
• “The writer who neglects punctuation, or mispunctuates, is liable to be misunderstood for the want of merely a comma, it often occurs that an axiom appears a paradox, or that a sarcasm is converted into a sermonoid.” ~ Edgar Allan Poe
• “Like everything metaphysical, the harmony between thought and reality is to be found in the grammar of the language.” ~ Ludwig Wittgenstein
• “You can be a little ungrammatical if you come from the right part of the country.” ~ Robert Frost
• “Commas in The New Yorker fall with the precision of knives in a circus act, outlining the victim.” ~ E.B. White
• “Damn the subjunctive. It brings all our writers to shame.” ~ Mark Twain
• “My attitude toward punctuation is that it ought to be as conventional as possible. The game of golf would lose a good deal if croquet mallets and billiard cues were allowed on the putting green. You ought to be able to show that you can do it a good deal better than anyone else with the regular tools before you have a license to bring in your own improvements.” ~ Ernest Hemingway
• “No iron can pierce the heart with such force as a period put just at the right place.” ~ Isaac Babel
• “Sometimes you get a glimpse of a semicolon coming, a few lines farther on, and it is like climbing a steep path through woods and seeing a wooden bench just at a bend in the road ahead, a place where you can expect to sit for a moment, catching your breath.” ~ Lewis Thomas
• “When I hear the hypercritical quarreling about grammar and style, the position of the particles, etc., etc., stretching or contracting every speaker to certain rules of theirs. I see that they forget that the first requisite and rule is that expression shall be vital and natural, as much as the voice of a brute or an interjection: first of all, mother tongue; and last of all, artificial or father tongue. Essentially your truest poetic sentence is as free and lawless as a lamb’s bleat.” ~ Henry David Thoreau
• “Ignorant people think it’s the noise which fighting cats make that is so aggravating, but it ain’t so; it’s the sickening grammar they use.” ~ Mark Twain
• “I believe that every English poet should read the English classics, master the rules of grammar before he attempts to bend or break them, travel abroad, experience the horror of sordid passion and — if he’s lucky enough — know the love of an honest woman.” ~ Robert Graves
• “GRAMMAR, n. A system of pitfalls thoughtfully prepared for the feet of the self-made man, along the path by which he advances to distinction.” ~ Ambrose Bierce
• “My spelling is Wobbly.  It’s good spelling but it Wobbles, and the letters get in the wrong places.”  ~A.A. Milne
• “Correct English is the slang of prigs who write history and essays.”  ~George Eliot

  “Grammar is the logic of speech, even as logic is the grammar of reason.”  ~Richard C. Trench

• “Only in grammar can you be more than perfect.”  ~William Safire
• “Here is a lesson in writing. First rule: Do not use semicolons. They are transvestite hermaphrodites representing absolutely nothing. All they do is show you’ve been to college.” ~ Kurt Vonnegut

Every author’s attitudes towards style are as different as his or her own writing style. What is your personal take on the role of grammar? With which authors do you most agree or disagree? Why?

Bio:

Erinn Stam is the Managing Editor for a nursing scholarship website. She attends Wake Technical Community College and is learning about scholarships for lpn. She lives in Durham, NC with her lovely 4-year-old daughter and exuberant husband.

Is it Just Me, or is the Difference Between ‘I’ and ‘Me’ Confusing?

Do you remember when you were a little kid, and you would ask your parents whether “me and Friend X could go out and play”? Do you remember being reminded that it is actually “Friend X and I”? When I was younger, I received this particular grammar correction from my parents all the time. And it led me to believe that one should use I in all instances when you are talking about two or more people, one of which includes you.

It wasn’t until I was older that I realized that the misuse of I and me is almost everywhere. As such, it is no surprise that I got this one particular grammar point wrong for most of my life. If you, too, find “I” and “me” confusing, then here are a few steps to remember how to use each word correctly.

1. Learn the difference between subjective and objective case.

The most important way to really learn any rule is to understand why it exists in the first place. “Me” is an objective pronoun, meaning it is used when it is referring to an object. An object, grammatically speaking, means that it receives action instead of causing action. So, for example, in the statement “Mike helped him,” Mike is the subject, because he causes the action. He helps him. “Him” receives help, and therefore is the object in the sentence. Remember the difference between actor and receiver, and knowing the difference between subjective and objective case becomes easy.

2. Learn the objective case pronouns of all subjective pronouns.

Now, to extend your ability to use all pronouns correctly, not just knowing when to use “I” or “me,” it is important to learn every objective case pronoun for its subjective counterpart. Memorize the following chart:

Subjective           Objective

I                            Me

He                        Him

She                      Her

It                               It

They                          Them

We                           Us

Who                          Whom

3. Do the singular test if still aren’t sure.

If you still aren’t quite sure, there is an easy test to determine whether you are using I or me correctly. Most people use the pronouns incorrectly when there are used in compound form. For example, “He and I went to the store” has a compound subject (multiple subjects). If you aren’t sure which pronoun to use, make the subject or object singular, using only the pronoun, like this:

“She sat on him and I.” -→ “She sat on I.”

The second sentence, once made singular, obviously looks and sounds wrong. Let’s try it again:

“Jeff and I are going to the store.”→ “I am going to the store.”

Here, the second converted sentence makes sense, indicating that the use of the pronoun is correct. If you were to replace the ‘I’ with ‘me’ you would see that it is clearly wrong: “Me am going to the store.”

Once you break down the reasons for rules, and you learn little tricks like the one above, you’d be surprised by how many of your grammar issues are resolved.

By-line:
Mariana Ashley is a freelance writer who particularly enjoys writing about online colleges. She loves receiving reader feedback, which can be directed to mariana.ashley031 @gmail.com.

Colons, Dashes and More

More grammar wisdom from the New York Time’s Philip B. Corbett. Colons, Dashes, and More

30 Common English Idioms and Their History

Here’s a delightful list of the thirty most common English idioms (figures of speech) and their historical origins. You’ll learn the origins of the phrases like “green-eyed monster,” “apple of my eye,” “skeleton in the closet” and many others.

30 Common English Idioms

Capitalization in Titles

Wondering how to capitalize words in titles? This short explanation tells you how to correctly capitalize titles.
Capitalization in Titles

Politicians, Watch Your Grammar!

A new study conducted by psychologists at the University of California, Merced and Indiana University, Bloomington, shows that the grammar politicians use affects election outcomes. Using the perfect aspect, in this case the past tense with the word “had,”–instead of the imperfect aspect, “was having,” which conveys continuing action into the present–improves your election chances in upcoming elections by a significant amount, at least for negatively perceived behavior. See http://scim.ag./grammar-matters

How To Write With Ordinal Numbers

This concise post tells you how to correctly write with ordinal numbers.
Writing With Ordinal Numbers

Are You A Grammar Geek? 35 Signs To Watch For

This funny and interesting post is worth looking at. How to tell if you are an English grammar geek:

35 Signs That You Are A Grammar Geek

Learn English Through Song

(This post is from guest blogger Angelita Williams)

Textbooks–they’re my own personal form of Ambien.   I’ve never been able to figure it out, no matter what it is, one page and I’m out like a light. But let me play with my Ipod and the music carries me for days.  I boast about being able to learn an entire new song in just a few hours.

You might not think of it as studying but in a sense that’s exactly what you are doing. You listen and repeat, listen and repeat, until the lyrics are permanently implanted in your head. And unlike material gained through books, songs can radiate through your head for days or even weeks before they’re entirely flushed down the drain.

So, what better way to study English than learning it through song? You get to learn vocabulary while hearing its proper pronunciation, though you might want to stay away from rap or anything too modern just for now, since colloquialisms are best learned at a more advanced stage, when you can tell the difference between correct and incorrect idiom usage. Below are some quick tips on how to study your lyrics:

1. Pick a song that you like but that is not too complex. It’s extremely important that you get the correct lyrics so that you can decipher the right meaning of the song. Lyrics mode is a great site to get accurate lyrics.

2. Read the lyrics in their entirety. You don’t need to understand everything but try to see if you can at least get a good feel of what the song is about. Is it a romantic song? A sad song? A happy song? Is it abstract or literal? Try to compare and contrast the English song to something familiar in your native tongue. It’ll help you see similar and cultural differences from your own.

3. Re-read and circle all the words/phrases you don’t know and would like to learn. Sometimes context clues will give you a better understanding of what the word means but if necessary, by all means look up their exact meaning in a dictionary. A dictionary might also be useful in finding other interesting phrases or words.

4. Hear the song three to four times before you decide to chime in karaoke style. Read the lyrics a few times right before bed and also try listening to the song while you sleep. Even in your slumber, your brain will still retain the information. Listen and repeat until you got it down.

5. Test yourself. There’s a neat Web site called Lyrics Training that is especially designed to help non-English speakers learn the language. As a series of song lyrics run down the screen its up to you to fill in the missing words. You can choose from a huge selection of contemporary songs in their bank that are divided into easy, medium and hard difficulty levels.

By-line:

This guest post is contributed by Angelita Williams, who writes on the topics of online college courses.  She welcomes your comments at her email Id: angelita.williams7 @gmail.com.