“Grammar is a piano I play by ear. All I know about grammar is its power.”

– Joan Didion

I’m pretty awesome at a fair amount of stuff. I can french braid my own hair without a mirror, ski backwards, ride bareback, and am really good at starting fires without matches, a lighter, or fuel. One thing I am totally not awesome at is grammar. I am so bad at grammar that it really has become a sort of sport. In every writing-based class I have taken since 7th grade I have dreaded by first paper. Not because I won’t do well, or because I don’t like writing, I dread it because I know that my teacher will mark, in bright red ink, every comma error in the entire thing. Honestly, I feel bad. Their wrists must start to cramp after the 400th.

And then, after handing back the paper, my teacher will take me aside and say “Pippa, I really love your writing but we should find some time to sit down and go over comma rules.” The most valiant effort in my academic career so far was made by Jamie Perry. He spent his lunch hour for about two months drilling me in comma rules, semi-colon rules, what a verb is (I also can’t remember parts of speech), and how not to have every other sentence be a run-on. To JP’s credit, I did, for about 30 minutes after each session, remember how to use a comma.

It’s not that I don’t value or appreciate language and the purpose of grammar. I write a lot and read obsessively. Grammar serves an undeniable function. It’s just that I don’t appreciate it getting in the way of how I write. It was only last year that I realized that I write almost everything, from lab reports to speech’s, like one might write a poem. I place commas where I would want someone to pause and periods for a longer break. In doing so I don’t worry about comma splices or run-on’s or fragments. I worry about flow. I write to be read out loud.

This might have something to do with the fact that I was a scarily late reader and grew up listening to audiobooks that were way past my reading and even comprehension level. As I progressed as a reader I found myself reading books aloud to no one but myself. So, when I started writing more and more I wrote how I remembered hearing the books I loved. I strive for cadence more than correctness.

It is my belief that grammar will, in the next decade, decrease in importance – eclipsed by the need to get messages across speedily and concisely. In social settings both online and in-person abbreviations, acronyms, and slang are taking over. I can’t say that I am fan of this but it is a reality. The next generation of teachers grew up using LOL and LMAO. It is likely that some of that will make its way into how they teach and how their students learn to express their thoughts. Assuming that this is going to happen, we will have to pick our battles.

I, for one, would rather spend hours waxing the importance of using real words then on grammar rules. Give me a comma splice any day, but I really can’t deal with the misuse of there, their, and they’re on the daily.