Gratitude to Grammar Nazis

They were all "grammar Nazis," our teachers. Sticklers for the right word in the right place, the correct preposition, and the necessary conjunction. The subject should definitely agree with the verb; adverbs and adjectives should be carefully chosen and sparingly used, only if they enhance meaning; and certainly no dangling verbs, a sin to be avoided at all costs. And no errant word in a sentence.

Grammar was an essential part of our learning, and Wren and Martin were our trusted friends, philosophers, guides, and mentors in our daily tussles with grammar.

We analysed and parsed sentences—simple, complex, compound—over precious weekends and ruined our vacations. We wondered where they found such long convoluted sentences, perhaps from a seventeenth-century novel, with a string of subordinate, coordinate, and subjunctive clauses. When we protested loud and long against the iniquities and vagaries of grammar, they quietly told us that grammar was the bedrock of a language and that they were giving us a good foundation, and if we were to learn the language, this was the way forward.

And again, one teacher came up with the shortest of sentences and asked us to amplify them: "The lark becomes a sightless song" and "I am never less alone than when alone," which was a little over the top for our grade nine minds, but we struggled through.

The upshot of this was that we learned to appreciate the English language, the beauty and use of its words, and to immediately recognise the unidiomatic and the ungrammatical. Even today, it hurts me to hear or see the wrong use of a word. Our teachers taught us syntax and style, the qualities of poetry and prose, and made us rewrite paragraphs and even entire essays to bring us closer to better writing. Punctuation was another bugbear where the teachers did not even let go of colons and semicolons. Disregard of rules of punctuation attracted the sarcastic “What is this piece of breathless prose?” Spelling was sacrosanct, and a word misspelt could spell doom.

Certainly, they were all old-school because, in today's age and time hemmed in by various social platforms, where writing is referred to as texting, all this is passé. Emoji is the shorthand for any emotion; words are reduced to tweets, misspelt with happy nonchalance, and of course, punctuation goes for a flamboyant six.

But away from social media platforms, good writing and speaking do demand the rigours, niceties, and graces of grammar. Simon Winchester, writer and journalist, says, "Accent, we can leave to the diversity of the market place, but the gods of grammar we should respect. How to say tomato does not matter, but what does matter are the clarities embodied in singulars and plurals, tenses and conditionals, qualifiers and determinants." Thus, in older times, we learned the virtues of grammar that stayed with us, and we owe an immense debt of gratitude to our "Grammar Nazis.”