why grammar matters
In most circumstances, correcting someone’s grammar is the height of bad manners. But, as an editor, it’s a large part of my job. I have to comb through manuscripts like an over-zealous teacher with a red pen, weeding out dangling modifiers and incomplete comparisons. Unsurprisingly, it doesn’t always make me popular.
There’s this widely held perception that grammar rules are overly fussy and pedantic. Terms like grammar Nazi conjure up the image of an officious authoritarian enforcing arbitrary rules for the sake of it. And I think that is a perception that needs challenging. Grammar isn’t a weapon to make people feel stupid or a stick to beat someone with. And it’s not an optional flourish that you can patch up at the end if you have time. It is a set of guidelines designed to enhance the clarity of your writing. Even dialects and fictional languages are structured around consistent rules, and these rules are necessary for comprehension.
Note I said guidelines, not hard and fast rules. There are grammatical conventions that are overly fussy and are largely ignored. Things like, thou shalt not end sentences with prepositions. I mean, technically yes, but when was the last time you heard someone say up with this I will not put? Personally, I will only correct minor grammatical errors if they introduce unnecessary ambiguity into a sentence. Like if an ambiguous antecedent makes it difficult to tell who is speaking or acting, or if the lack of an Oxford comma conjures an unholy abomination.
And everybody makes grammatical mistakes sometimes. It’s no reflection on your ability as a writer. But at the same time, it’s not something you can ignore.
You might be thinking, why do I need to learn grammar when I can just use something like Grammarly? It’s a valid question. The AI genie is well and truly out of the bottle and, over the coming decades, it is going to change the way we work as writers and editors. AI grammar checkers like grammarly are useful tools, particularly if you’re editing your own work. The AI will pick up errors you will miss because it’s not hampered by things like confirmation bias. At the same time, they don’t make learning grammar obsolete, and here’s why.
Grammar is a set of rules designed to promote clarity in written communication. Obviously it’s relevant to speech as well, but when you’re speaking to someone there are additional aids to comprehension such as tone, body language and facial expression. With writing, the words on the page are all you have, so clarity becomes all the more important.
If you understand how these grammatical rules work and why you’re implementing them, your writing will be stronger. An AI can only make suggestions based on what is already there. If what you’re feeding it is weak, it will spit something weak back out at you. But if you have a decent understanding of grammar, you can create a strong foundation for that critical first draft.
Also, you need to know when to break the rules. As I’ve already mentioned, grammar rules are guidelines. They never apply in all situations. For example, grammatical rules state you should only use a comma with a coordinating conjunction if it separates two independent clauses. But you can ignore that rule if there is a dramatic reason that justifies introducing that extra pause. Dialogue is another area where you can and should play fast and loose with grammar. And that is because it’s too perfect. If you pay attention to how people speak, you’ll find that the majority of people frequently use incorrect grammar or idiosyncratic sentence structure. Using perfect grammar in dialogue is a surefire way to make your characters sound unnatural and robotic.
Language is fluid and malleable. There is a reason AI grammar checkers usually frame their interjections as suggestions that you have to approve. If there was one objectively perfect way of communicating a sentence, there’d be nothing wrong with letting an AI (or a human editor) simply implement the changes for you.
AI grammar checkers aren’t designed to do the work for you. They’re a tool you’re driving, so you should make sure you’re qualified to sit behind the wheel.
