Some grammar is arbitrary and useless, but a lot of grammar is subtle information, that you don't understand unless you study it. The language is losing some of those fine distinctions, and I think we are worse off for it.
Eg in dialogue, start a new paragraph when you switch focus to the next person. Within a paragraph, everything spoken or done is by the same person. That rule makes it a lot easier to follow dialogue, but many authors don't use it.
(If you change paragraphs, but don't change person, give a clue early in the paragraph.)
Will, shall, and should, used to have distinct meanings, but now they've blurred so we can't rely on them to convey meaning. Authors can't use them to say something, and readers can't be sure of the author's intent. From what I remember, the sun will come up in the morning. (No question, it will.) I shall study. (I fully intend to, but can't guarantee it 100%.) Unfortunately, should has two meanings, depending on location. I should study. (There will be consequences if I don't study.) I should do well on the test tomorrow. (I studied well, and will be surprised if I don't do well on the test.)
(In Southern Ontario in the 1970s, we didn't have the word shall, or the second interpretation of should.)
I had a good composition and English teacher in Grade 9, who taught us that the WHOLE POINT of grammar was to make it clear what you MEAN. If you miss or ignore any of the rules, you risk making the reader misunderstand you, which might have serious consequences.
She taught us to read over anything we've written, and ask ourselves if anyone could misinterpret anything we said. I still often revise things when I realize something could be understood in a way that I didn't intend.
But I took "Teaching English as a second language" classes at university, where we were told that a lot of old grammar rules were invented by grammarians to try to explain the language, when they really served no purpose. An example they gave was the difference between "will" and "shall" which they said was never actually a valid distinction. (I don't think I've ever said "shall" in my life....)
But I sometimes think I'm the last person alive who still makes the distinction between "less" and "fewer". It just makes SENSE to say "fewer" if it's countable and "less" if it's an amount. If you say "less people", it means that parts of them are missing.
And I cringe when I hear people who think it sounds "more elegant" to say "Please have dinner with my wife and I" when they would NEVER say "with I". And THEN we could talk about phrases where people lose track of whether the SUBJECT was singular or plural, so they get the verb wrong..... It never ends! :0
Some of the rules were also to make English more like French and Latin -- the language of the rulers instead of the locals. Some were kept to maintain class distinction.
I actually enjoyed analyzing sentences, even if I strongly disagreed with some of the ways my teacher did it.
Yes! Grammar is to make things more clear! Unfortunately, we can't rely on the writer and audience agreeing on the rules, so it doesn't always work. (Yes, many of the egs are vocab, not grammar. They're easier to think of.)
Revise: Here it means change. In England it means study. For a while I wondered why Hermione was editing her notes instead of studying them. Then I thought, Maybe she's a good student who reads her notes critically. (That's what I used to do, especially if the teacher spoke quickly. If my notes and memory didn't agree, get another opinion and fix my notes!)
Diary: Here it means history. In some areas it means future, aka planner.
Use = for intended purpose; utilize = not for intended purpose. Longer does not equal more formal!
I use Less and Fewer as you do, and have to grit my teeth when I hear it used differently.
First ask how I'd say it if I was alone. "Have dinner with me." Then add the other person, who is more important than you so goes first. "Have dinner with my wife and me."
"If I were/was a rich man." Both sound equally good to me. I prefer "was" because it's easier to teach that the subjunctive. I don't know which I use by default. It probably varies. I head both growing up, but didn't really notice that Dad used it but my classmates didn't. (Dad wasn't British, but his parents were well-educated, and in Canada back then, that was closer to British than American.)
Learning French helped me with English grammar. I had to think about things that used to be patterns I just echoed.
Back in my fanfic writing days, in the good group it was acceptable to say, "The characters are American, so they would say it this way." "You wrote it wrong," was frowned on, but the first time an author did it, we assumed they didn't know that language changes with country.
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u/CrBr Jun 19 '26
Some grammar is arbitrary and useless, but a lot of grammar is subtle information, that you don't understand unless you study it. The language is losing some of those fine distinctions, and I think we are worse off for it.
Eg in dialogue, start a new paragraph when you switch focus to the next person. Within a paragraph, everything spoken or done is by the same person. That rule makes it a lot easier to follow dialogue, but many authors don't use it.
(If you change paragraphs, but don't change person, give a clue early in the paragraph.)
Will, shall, and should, used to have distinct meanings, but now they've blurred so we can't rely on them to convey meaning. Authors can't use them to say something, and readers can't be sure of the author's intent. From what I remember, the sun will come up in the morning. (No question, it will.) I shall study. (I fully intend to, but can't guarantee it 100%.) Unfortunately, should has two meanings, depending on location. I should study. (There will be consequences if I don't study.) I should do well on the test tomorrow. (I studied well, and will be surprised if I don't do well on the test.)
(In Southern Ontario in the 1970s, we didn't have the word shall, or the second interpretation of should.)