About 90% of everything that's said about grammar is bogus -- useless, obtuse, or flat-out inaccurate. And most of it will make your writing (and your life) worse if you follow it.
That's why I like this post from Arrant Pedantry, an excellent grammar-focused blog: 12 Mistakes Nearly Everyone Who Writes About Grammar Mistakes Makes.
Liberate yourself from useless grammar pedantry we see so often:
- Confusing grammar with spelling, punctuation, and usage.
- Treating style choices as rules.
- Ignoring register.
- Saying that a disliked word isn't a word.
- Turning proposals into ironclad laws.
- Failing to discuss exceptions to rules.
- Overestimating the frequency of errors.
- Believing that etymology is destiny.
- Simply bungling the rules.
- Saying that good grammar leads to good communication.
- Using grammar to put people down.
- Forgetting that correct usage ultimately comes from users.
#11 is the worst of the lot. It's a profoundly dysfunctional way to think about the ways we use language. Any fundraiser engaged in that should lose their license!
from Future Fundraising Now http://ift.tt/1RzFmT3
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