Mellowing Out with Grammar and Usage

I spent about forty-five years marking the papers of my students. Over those years I taught sixth graders through college undergrads--though the vast majority of my time was with 7th and 8th graders and high school students.

The admission I must make here is that--from the very beginning to the end of it all--there were things I didn't get "right"--things I learned as I went along--things I forgot. I was only twenty-one when I first faced a classroom of seventh graders, and, sure, I knew more than they did about English grammar and usage, but there were hosts of things I didn't yet know--and I'm still learning things now. And unlearning.

For example, I didn't know then about essential and nonessential modifiers, about an en-dash and an em-dash, about the various uses of a semicolon, the difference between nauseous and nauseated, and on and on.

But as I taught more and more, I learned these things--principally because I was teaching them (no better way to learn!).

I also learned more about the evolution of usage. When I was a student, the teachers told us we must never start a sentence with a coordinating conjunction. (And I listened carefully.) They taught us not to split infinitives (to carelessly do so earned a red mark). They told us never to end a sentence with a preposition (doing so was frowned on). These "rules" (and others like them) are gone now, really--as they should be. Great writers have always "violated" all three of them--and such rules make no sense. We made them up--as, of course, we have done with all grammar/usage rules.

Take sentence fragments. Intentional fragments are everywhere. Everywhere.  And they can be effective. I use them. All the time.

And I've watched other "rules" from my boyhood that have disappeared (or are disappearing): the difference between will and shall, for example. And I've noticed in books I'm reviewing that alright is becoming common--though I still refuse to use it. (Standards!) I've also noticed the changing usage of sentences like this one: Everyone brought his book. It changed, first, to Everyone brought his or her book. Now I routinely see Everyone brought their book. To tell the truth, it's a construction I try to avoid.

Not that there are no rules, mind you. Affect and effect are not synonyms. Fulsome is not a compliment about your writing. Sojourn is not a synonym for journey. And on and on.

But, as I said at the top, I have mellowed in retirement. If somebody asks me about what's "correct" in a sentence, I will tell them (him? her?)--but I will also note  that Standard English did not come down off the mountain with Moses, that it is evolving, that we made it up, that clarity and empathy and wit and a dash of self-deprecation are still the best ingredients in the stew of writing.