Grammar is [sadly] Relative

I am a grammar snob.  At least, I used to be, before I took a class in linguistics from the chair of one of the top-ranked linguistics departments in the country.  He taught me that all language is relative, so having set in stone rules doesn’t always make sense.

Yes, I’ll say that again.  My professor of linguistics said that, because language is relative and constantly evolving, from words to grammatical structures, sometimes the rules are over-emphasized.

This, for me, was an earth-shaking revelation.  I had spent time as an editor and as a copy editor — my job was to fix grammatical errors and make people follow the rules!  Adding in a semicolon between two complete sentences not seperated by a conjunction was my drug.  Heck, even the New York Times employs a writer whose job is to write columns on word usage, so it had to be important.

As a result, I was one of those people who was convinced that the youth America, and really, all countries around the world, was going down the drain because of bad grammar.

However, based on this class, I started thinking about writing and the writing ability of our generation.   We can read, which is a big step ahead of most of our ancestors.  And we write; we write e-mails, text messages, facebook notes, and blog posts on a daily basis.  And if language is relative, then it doesn’t matter if we spell “love” or “<3.”

It quickly became clear to me that, in fact, we are one of the most literate generations in history.

Penelope Trunk posits that the best writers in history are graduating from college, right now.  She cites research that shows that with the advent of the internet, people are writing more and more in their spare time.  While previously most, if not all, writing took place in a classroom setting, now only 38% of writing does.  Which means we’re all writing a lot more than we used to be.

I’m not saying that we can debate, create arguments, and understand logic better than previous generations.  That’s a topic for another post, if not a phD dissertation.

And don’t get your hopes up; I’m also not saying that grammar doesn’t matter.  It still does, especially in the workplace.  If you’re writing an e-mail to the boss, it had better have good grammar.  If you’re taking a standardized test with an essay-writing component, you’d better believe they’re going to grade you on your grammar and spelling.  That’s the point.

Some employers will throw out resumes with a single typo.

Even if grammar and spelling are relative, you’ll still be judged on it.  Having a basic understanding of the language we speak and write is not optional, it’s required.