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What is it celebrating? How do we celebrate it? What is the dress code?
Approach Grammar Day as you would any other national holiday: as respite from the mundane, an opportunity to turn to your neighbor with kindness. Grammar is a divisive topic and can poison a conversation if handled improperly, like discussing politics at Thanksgiving dinner or reacting to a first-time mother’s baby photographs.
The definition and application of grammar are often split between descriptivism and prescriptivism.
Descriptive grammar is grammar as it is spoken and written today. It is a form-follows-function approach to language; descriptivists study how we use language and attempt to formulate rules based on current usage.
Prescriptive grammarians, however, keep a set of rules and conventions not to be flaunted or abused. Don’t end a sentence with a preposition. Avoid the passive voice. Don’t split infinitives. People may view prescriptivism as a rigid, unfeeling philosophy, but learning prescriptive grammar in school is helpful, if only so we’ll be aware of what we’re circumventing in the future.
If you tire of us-vs.-them scenarios you’ll find even more consternation in this: there are those who argue that the prescriptivism vs. descriptivism debate is fabricated, used to drum up sales of grammar books and page views of usage blogs. In a piece for Slate in 2012, Steven Pinker wrote that “euphonious dichotomies are usually phony dichotomies,” and that this controversy “may be extinguished by a realization that the conventions of linguistic usage are tacit.”
Spoken language is the language, and all usage is relative
Embroiled in these (maybe fake) prescriptive vs. descriptive hostilities, we forget that the only power anyone has is expression. In college, one of my classmates, reading his essay aloud, pronounced the word posthumous as post-hue-muss. No one corrected him. We knew what he meant and were content to overlook a minor indignity so that he might preserve his rhythm. A descriptivist would say of this scenario, “Spoken language is the language, and all usage is relative.”
At the same time, the gaffe distracted us from the piece. His saying post-hue-muss tripped our brains and we missed a few words while we took a second to parse this new pronunciation—Oh yeah, he meant posthumous. A prescriptivist would say, “This is why we have rules.”
You can lose the beauty and whimsy of language in yet another thinkpiece or comments section. Let’s approach the day in the spirit of détente or withheld judgment. Grammar Day is not a holiday for heightened vigilance, nor is it a license to level unsolicited corrections at those who use tautologies like ATM Machine or keep their modifiers dangling, free and airy, or split infinitives to boldly go where no one has gone before; no, take the day to observe the well-built structure of communication and its countless bent and broken rules. It’s the only structure we have. Find someone to celebrate it with.
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Further reading:
Heinemann's One-Day Grammar Coupon (expires at 11:59pm est.)
Grammar Girl: Quick and Dirty Tips
“Tense Present: Democracy, English, and the Wars over Usage” by David Foster Wallace
William Safire’s Rules for Writers and the archive of the sadly defunct “On Language” column in the New York Times
If I Was You… And Alot More Grammar Mistakes You Might Be Making by Lauren Sussman
“Prescriptivism and Descriptivism” from the English Language & Usage Community Blog
The Elements of Style by William Strunk and E.B. White
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Anthony is the Digital Content Editor for Heinemann. He took a copyediting course at Emerson College in the spring semester of his junior year. That is the zenith of his qualifications.
