Why Even Bother?

I know this is what you're wondering. You're thinking, 'ho hum, another toff tries to find yet another way for me to feel shit about myself. Well you can you can go to hell in a hand-basket MC Grammar, because grammar's just what smarmy people use to put everyone else down! I hate you!'

It's true – correcting people over their grammar is the height of rudeness. No-one ever appreciates it, in fact a lot of people also consider it pointless. What does it really matter if an apostrophe is out of place, or if 'your' and 'you're' get mixed up. Who cares? You still get your point across, right?

It depends on who you're trying to get your point across to. Yeah, your mates on facebook are going to be down with your avant garde ways, but how hard does it become trying to write a cover letter for a job when you're not sure of where an apostrophe goes in 'its' or 'it's'? Most employers just throw away an application at the sight of one of those indescrepancies, so grammar can end up being the difference between getting ahead and staying where you are.

But that's all pretty superficial business. More importantly, the purpose of grammar is to help make a sentence clearer – otherwise it's just a way of showing off.

As Lynne Truss, who wrote 'Eats, Shoots and Leaves' said, grammar and punctuation are the traffic signs of language. They prevent meaning from getting confused. For example: A used car show-yard sign reads, 'Used cars for sale: Why go elsewhere to be cheated? Come here first!' This looks wrong because of a mangled subject/verb agreement. More on that later. I promise it will be awesome. But more than that, the bottom line is that a lot of the time, you're not actually saying what you think you're saying, and that's like wearing a hessian sack and thinking you're in Prada.

Probably the number one example of this is the case of 'your'. I'm going to settle this score in the next post, but for now I'll say that when someone writes something like 'hope your well', the nearest thing they're actually asking is 'hope you have turned into a well.'

It's important to remember to MC Grammar loves you. MC Grammar has noticed your outrageous physical attractiveness, and also finds you funny and witty. MC Grammar doesn't mean to offend you or be a toff –and don't forget, MC Grammar makes grammar mistakes all the times. If this blog really annoys you, but helps you just a smidgen to write a letter or impress someone you're trying to sleep with, then my massive pants are filled with funky joy.