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In Defense of Grammar
According to my high school English teacher sixty years ago, a gentleman polishes his shoes and knows how to use a semicolon.
Check out p.256 of this quaint little book:
Be very careful that the wording of your letters is in strict accordance with the rules of grammar. Nothing stamps the difference between a well educated man and an ignorant one more decidedly than the purely grammatical language of the one compared with the labored sentences, misplaced verbs, nouns, adjectives, and adverbs of the other.
People say that grammar “evolves,” but there is a difference between evolution and entropy. Standardization actually is a good idea for its own sake. Like almost all the things we do, language provides semiotic opportunities. Think of a bus with ads on its sides. The bus exists to transport people from place to place. But, as long it’s making the trip, why not attach other things that the bus company wants to deliver and recipients don’t mind, and may appreciate, receiving?
Principally, language carries explicit ideas from utterer to audience. But how it is delivered carries other messages. Some of the messages one may want to deliver are about the utterer: how careful, skillful, respectful, educated he or she may be. Some of those messages are self-proved by…