Joan's columns are always a joy to read, and this is a subject that often drives me crazy.  While correct grammar is often lost on people, I find that it is even more present, when the language is spoken.  And  many incorrect grammatical phrases are so common, it is generally accepted by society.  Example:  Ending a sentence with a preposition:  "Here's where we're at."  I here so many people speaking this way, that it drives me crazy, and I am tempted to offer a polite correction.  But that goes down the path of proper manners.........

I here? Joking right?

Great job, sent this along to my daughter, a press secretary. How about "it's" and "its" next week?

I'd like to see the networks throw a yellow flag and fine those highly compensated sports announcers who regularly confuse the subjective and objective cases.  Students learn from examples in their lives, in person and on the air.  Wouldn't we have fun seeing "$500 FINE" flashing on the screen each time an announcer made this type of mistake?  The finer distinctions might just sink in.

The misuse of "me" and "I" is extremely irritating, and I hope others see this and correct themselves. 

I've heard media people use the wrong form on TV and on radio, as well as politicians (who lose a little of my support with each utterance), and I've seen it in newspapers and magazines, so perhaps this article should be sent to editors and press people everywhere.

I'll save the link for future reference.

The "I" and "me" issue has always been easy for me to figure out, but not "to lie" or "to lay." I almost had it, but then you lost me at "infinitive form of the verb"....:-)

Joan fears we will lose the English language.  It seems to me we lost that long ago.  We have American English which is a far cry from English. As the culture diversifies we will probably lose even more of it.  Technology will wipe out large sections and the language will continue to be reduced and refined as as te need for a more rapid verbal and written response becomes the norm.  I suppose or me suppose that while grammar is important to many of us the future will hold that what matters is "does the point come across?  Are we communicating".  I'm not necessarily disagreewing with her postion I just wonder how important it will be in the future and if it really matters whether, I lie down or I lay down or I laid down. 

Joan's column is hardly a model of grammar, nor are the comments posted. As a college writing professor, I taught only two principles: the art of writing is re-writing and say more by saying less. Writing is about the reader, not the writer.

Hang on, let me give Count Lev Nikolayevich Tolstoy a quick text to see if he agrees.  (just having fun with you!)

Grammar is an imperative, I believe!

I'm surprised no one has mentioned the misuse of the term 'literally'.

Ah, the memory of diagraming on the blackboard is very nice.  I loved that practice.  The placing of every word in an orderly composition was so gratifying.  Then there was the teacher who added colored chalk to the exercise.  Wow!  Can you tell that I became a painter?

Thank you for a nice and easily grasped lesson. I thank my 8th grade teacher, the late Mrs. Ruth McGuirk of Hingham, for patiently drilling us in similar fashion to good effect.

Keep up the good fight. This is important. When language is corrupted, thought is corrupted.

One that drives me nuts it "the reason why," when, of course, it should be "the reason that."  To compound the error, many say "the reason why is because" thus compounding the redundancy.

"Now I lay me down to sleep..."

I guess rules change over time.

Shall we remember that spelling, usage, and style are not the same as grammar? All are important, and related, but not interchangeable.

Although it's far less annoying than the mess made of the language on the Internet (and elsewhere), it irritates me when people respond to someone's pointing out a spelling error by contemptuously referring to the "grammar police."

Thank you for this article. Clear and accurate communication requires upholding standards. Would so enjoy a "lesson" each week (or day) on front page of Globe...something small but important, including contractions, usage, and various elements of grammar. 

Proofreading is important, but a good teacher would have pointed out error and moved on. All of us have something to learn.

Wonderful column. I find myself shouting at television and radio news anchors for their poor grammar. It's rather sad that what I tune into isn't what they say but how they say it. Please continue the lessons!

This is the type of article for which the Globe should be proud! Keep it up.

All grammar is social. 

Well at least we have three things clear:

1. Musicains are drug/sex addicts

2. sports lovers are "dumber than us"

3. people love to show other people that they fit in with their chosen clique

I sincerely hope every one posting here is 22 or younger, otherwise folks, go strtaight outside and breathe deeply...Enjoy!!

Love this op-ed!  Whether it's a TV or print ad, newspaper or magazine writing (especially headlines), or even a restaurant menu, I find that even simple grammatical errors can make the final product feel unfinished/unpolished/unprofessional.  That inattention to detail begins to erode my confidence a little bit, right from the start.  Thanks for providing this public service!

One of the (many) reasons for the decline in writing and grammar skills is that we have a generation being raised to believe that "bloggers" are writers, and that "blogging" is writing. Texting is eroding what counts as a sentence, or a thought, let alone a correctly spelled word, or the idea of using decent grammar.  Email?  Forget it.  Good grammar is like a muscle that you have to use and exercise, or it will lose strength, become painful and have serious consequences in the "real world" of resume writing, interviewing, and employment.  I once interviewed a fantastic candidate for a job opening.  I'd noticed that she had a spelling error on her resume; I overlooked it because her resume and cover letter indicated she was ideal.  When I interviewed her, sure enough, she was as good in person as she was on paper (I offered her the job); at the end of the interview,  I respectfully pointed out the spelling error.   She was very thankful to me for pointing it out, and responded professionally, and with poise.  Sometimes, you have to give someone the benefit of the doubt and leave it up to them to prove if doing so was justified.  

Excellent column -- and very MUCH needed!  I work in an office with ostensibly well-educated professionals.  Yet, I constantly hear "I" used where "me" is correct.  And, yes, English is the mother tongue of the offenders!

Liked this article but wish the BG would police itself more.  Start, for example, with p. B4 in today's paper: "...he had gone to the Fujitas's home in Wayland..."  It's plural - "the Fujitas" - so just add the apostrophe, exactly as you would write "the cats' home."

"HHK" That is exactly what I was saying.  I wasn't saying I support the degarding of grammar or the language. I was simply saying it appears to me there will indeed be a triumph of " utilitarianism."  Whether that is bad or good I suppose in some sense it's bad and in another not so much.  One guy talked about knowing which fork to use.  Oddly I've been in some of the finest restaurants in DC with some fairly important figures.  A good portion of them used "one fork" and "one knife".  Nobody winced. 

Go stand in the corner for not knowing about transitive and intransitive verbs.

I had English grammar beaten into me by angry nuns, and I've always been grateful to them.

I’ve enjoyed reading Joan Wickersham’s column on this topic, along with all the comments it generated, and I agree with just about every one of them, contradictory as they may appear. Adhering to the rules of correct grammar, diction, and syntax is indeed one way—along with the right clothes, hairstyle, home, and car—to define yourselfby class and income and education. That’s why those rules are helpful to know when you are trying to find a way to move up the socio-economic ladder, e.g., in writing a personal statement for a college or job application. In the wrong hands, of course, insistence on “good” grammar (note the moral connotations of the adjective) can become a weapon of the ruling elite, an instrument of humiliation and exclusion.

That said, following the rules can help you communicate clearly, whatever your class position, when the ideas you want to convey are not simple but complex. They offer a kind of linguistic template with movable parts to help you sort out logical relationships and get your thoughts properly and efficiently arranged in your own mind.

But even if you have nothing particularly challenging to get across, following the rules can yield a kind of pleasure that has nothing to do with social climbing. It’s the pleasure we feel when we encounter a thing of beauty, where every part of the sentence is in its place and working efficiently with every other part to produce a certain formal effect. There’s no contradiction here. The very idea of “beauty,” something that goes beyond mere usefulness or practicality, has for many centuries been the special care and focus of the economic elites, who have amassed enough wealth to stop wasting their time laboring for the practical necessities of life (food, shelter, clothing, health) and can thus spend it learning to appreciate “higher” things, including beautiful writing. But just because wealthy folks can use what they’ve learned as a weapon of class warfare doesn’t mean it isn’t a real ability that produces real pleasure. So why should it be a pleasure we deny ourselves? Correct grammar, like correct diction and syntax, helps to bring what the poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge called “the blessed machine of language” to its highest pitch of perfection. A lot more is required to achieve that goal than following “the rules,” of course: you have to have something intelligent to say, and it helps if you show a spark of creativity and originality in saying  it.  Your particular brand of creativity and originality may even find expression in breaking the rules, but you have to know the rules to break them intelligently.

The basic question is, “Whom are you addressing and for what purpose?” I like to think of writing the way I think of any other craft, like woodworking. Are you making a guitar or a chair? If a chair, do you intend it for the parlor (for conversation, primarily) or the dining room (for helping the sitter reach the food on the table) or the patio (for leaning back and enjoying the scenery) or the kitchen counter or to milk the cows?  You get the idea. In every case, the most important question about a piece of furniture is, “Will it do what I need it to do?” If all you want to do is take a load off your feet, an overturned orange crate will serve. And there’s nothing wrong with that. If an ungrammatical and misspelled tweet gets you and your friends to arrive in the lobby of the multiplex at the same time, it should be above reproach from the writing police. By the same token, if James Joyce needs to violate all the rules of syntax, diction, and grammar to write a masterpiece like Finnegan’s Wake, I think we should give him a pass. I would even urge the reverse-snobs out there to stop slapping him upside the head for writing such impenetrable drivel and consider the possibility that just because they cannot see the point he is trying to make, it doesn’t mean his novel has no point or that the point is not worth making an effort to understand.

If you want to go beyond the minimum goal of functionality, knowing the rules of grammar, syntax, and diction can help both the writer, who is conforming to the rules to achieve something beautiful, and the reader, who will thereby achieve an appreciation of that beautiful something. Like a well-made wooden chair, good writing will also be concise (nothing extraneous—no glue oozing out of the joints), efficient (every part working as it should—the arm-rest at the proper height), and structurally integrated (proper alignment or coordination of parts with each other and with the whole—the rocking chair doesn’t tip you over backwards). That done, you might add a few well-placed similes (a modest bit of hand-carving on the head-rest) to make it your own. 

If you understand the rules of grammar, syntax, and diction, you gain an appreciation of one facet of what makes a certain kind of writing, designed for a certain purpose, beautiful. If that’s not important to you, you might still want other people to understand your best ideas, or at the very least, to give you a job.