Grammar? What about her?

/Rant on

Lotsa people like to say you have to "know the rules of grammar in order to break them."

Really? Since when? According to what universal law of the cosmos? Who made you an arbiter of all things grammatically correct?

I know people who not only break the laws of grammar, but grind them underfoot, pour jet fuel on the ashes and light a bonfire. These people cannot read nor write.

Yet, they communicate perfectly well. Who are you to say they are not?

"Well, they are not writing."

And? What in the nine hells of Dante and the seven f'dangin' rings of power does writing have to do with it? These people communicate perfectly well. They can bloody well dictate to someone else who CAN write it down.

What is the difference? Barbara Cartland was one of the world's most prolific romance novel authors. She dictated her work and someone else typed it. She was one of the most commercially successful writers of the past century.

So. How do your earnings stack up against hers? How about the volume of her work compared to yours?

"Well, she knew the rules of grammar."

Circular logic will leave you eating your tail. So I reiterate, I know people who communicate perfectly well and leave proper grammar in shambles. 

"Proper grammar makes it easier to read."

A hit, a very palpable hit! Maybe the writer doesn't give a levitating coitus about you reading it. Maybe, just maybe, they wrote it for someone else to read. Didja think of that? You may continue to perch on your elevated milking stool, but forsooth, it hath no legs and thou be now recumbent.

I freely admit to being a grammar nazi, but I only SEIG HEIL! at people who are obnoxious about it or I do it to gently rib friends. I expect the same of them.

I have friends who say that I break the rules of grammar gleefully and with intentions aforethought. Yes we does my precious, yes we does. I do it, as they point out, to make a point, to make the expressed thoughts more personal, more vibrant and more thought-provoking. (Actual typos in my work make me wanna turn green, shred my shirt, blow out my shoes and miraculously keep my pants on, despite them being tighter than hooker's spandex on Saturday night.)

So lemme add this in defense of my unknowingly grammar-defying buds out yonder. Nextest time you decide to get all High 'N Strunk & White on 'em, please tell me how many books you have written (I'm at 12 now and 9 in print, not counting the 60+ history volumes I have contributed to), how many words you have written AND been PAID to write (for me, just guessing in excess of 2 million at this point) and how much money you make annually from writing (100 percent of my income) and how long you have been paid to be an editor (30 years and counting heah). Yeah. Let's get into a male farm fowl fight.

Yassee, when you go after people who look at grammar as a mild suggestion instead of a rule, yer trying to have a battle of wits with someone who is woefully unarmed compared to your arsenal. I'm just reminding you, "Let's have a fair fight, no hitting below the belt and keep it clean." Otherwise, I'mma have to step in an' beat you down by using your own rules.

/rant off