Blogging Insecurities #1

My greatest insecurity in starting this blog is my shaky grammar. Grammar was a course I bluffed my way through starting in the seventh grade. I did not love the instructor or the rigidity of the subject, so only passed, and that is what my grammar skills are today: only passable. Writing terrifies me. Would you believe that to get an M.F.A. in acting, no writing is required? Script analysis and make-up application are essential to the degree, but writing is not.

I can only timidly grade student writing, but am still offended by egregious errors. I think if you are going to make writing mistakes, proofread carefully and then make the same mistakes and misspellings consistently. Of course, texting has certainly affected the way students write. R U LOL @ dis? OMG--reeeeeallllyyyyyy? Shakespeare played fast and loose with the English language and brought it to great and lasting prominence, so maybe that is what the texting generation is doing today: revolutionizing language, but with technology. As someone who encourages rule breaking in learning, I appreciate that. Still, we all need to be competent at the rules before we break them and that is where students often trip up.

I always defer to Dean Sharon Robinson on this subject. Besides her administrative duties, she is an English professor and teaches a course called "Perfect Grammar" which motivates students to call out everyone on their imperfect grammar. Dr. Robinson practices what she preaches. She is an elegant speaker and once glared at me in a curriculum meeting for dangling a participle. She believes that simple clarity is the point of good grammar, but notes that issues of class and snobbery are often how people are judged when they misspeak. I asked for a quick grammar lesson to include with this blog. Here are her thoughts:

Most egregious written errors:
* Thinking that "however" and "therefore" are conjunctions that may be used like "but" or "so"; they may not.
* Misuse of the semi-colon. The semi-colon separates two sentences related in content (except for the lesser use, to separate items in a list when individual items in that list contain a comma).
* Making plurals with apostrophes. We do make possessives with apostrophes. All those yard signs that say "The Smith's" are wrong. I can barely stand to talk about apostrophes.
* A lot IS ALWAYS TWO WORDS (unless of course one means "allot," i.e., distribute).

Most egregious spoken errors:
* Subjective vs. objective pronouns: Mary gave a lovely vase to me husband and me (not "I"). If you wouldn't say "Mary gave a beautiful vase to I," then don't use it just because someone else is a co-recipient.
* Lie/lay: We lie down; we tell our faithful dogs to lie down. "Lay" is either the past tense of "lie" (I lay down for a nap yesterday at noon) or a different verb altogether (Lay your books down on the table).


Thank you, Dr. Robinson, for the tips and this handy reference website: www.grammar.quickanddirtytips.com. Hopefully, this blog will be my opportunity to clean up the mess I started in seventh grade and write in fear no longer.