Is It Bad if You Have to Learn Grammar Again

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The summertime I turned xviii, I worked as an banana for my high school art teacher. Information technology was the chore of a lifetime: preparing canvases, making tuna sandwiches, having luncheon on the deck of his houseboat. I even got to apparel in a gorilla suit to choice his literary agent upwards at the airport.

(Oh, the pre-9/11 days of lax drome security.)

Anyhow, yep—in addition to being an fine art teacher who permit us depict nude models, this human being was most to become a New York Times bestselling author.

But we didn't know that just so.

In the weeks leading upwardly to publication, i of my tasks was to read a last draft of his book earlier he sent information technology off to his editor. He asked me for my feedback, and I dutifully complied, sitting at my parents' kitchen table with a red pen in hand.

Every time I found a sentence fragment, I'd mark it. Ten! Every time I found something that in some manner conflicted with the iron clad rules I'd learned in English class, I allow him know. X! X! X!

I might also have put in a few notes most things I read that touched my immature-just-shriveled center, simply I am pretty sure I focused on the grammar.

The book was "All I Actually Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten."

It became a bestseller and cultural miracle, and in my beady-eyed focus on the judgement fragments, I'd almost entirely missed the stuff almost that book that rocked the earth. I was trying to exist useful, but actually, I had been an idiot.

Grammar in Fiction

Fast frontward twenty-5 years. Although I founded National Grammar Day and the Society for the Promotion of Good Grammar, I've since come to sympathise that proficient grammar has its place—and that place is non necessarily in books.

Sure books, of course, must follow the conventions of grammar. Near business books, textbooks—anything seeking to convey information to an audience expecting conventional grammar.

But other books, peculiarly works of fiction, tin benefit from throwing the so-chosen rules out the door. I'd become and so far as to say that correct grammer might even proceed aspiring writers from publishing their work, and that correct grammar in the wrong place might diminish the reading feel.

This doesn't mean writers don't need to acquire grammar, of course.

Just as athletes need to larn the rules of the game to play, just as painters demand to learn all about color and form and canvas, writers need to understand what the conventions of language are. This is what lets them break the rules artfully to create a conceivable world and sympathetic characters.

Marking Twain, who'south created some of the almost memorable stories in history, said in an 1887 oral communication to the Regular army and Navy Gild of Connecticut, "Great books are weighed and measured by their way and matter, and not the trimmings and shadings of their grammer."

The shadings and trimmings of grammar are of import to building the style and matter. But they're a tool and not the end goal.

That said, the more a writer knows well-nigh grammar, the more information technology can be styled and shaded to great effect.

Jane Austen and Grammar

Accept the example of Jane Austen, whom I bring up not because in that location's anything wrong with contemporary fiction—far from it—but considering everybody'southward read her and you'll know what I'm talking about.

Jane Austen was a master of bending language to create grapheme and vocalisation, and while she didn't go around clubbing grammatical conventions to expiry, what she managed to do with Latinate words is nothing short of astonishing.

A pair of academics, Mary Margolies DeForest and Eric Johnson, wrote a computer program to clarify the frequency of Latinate words in her novels.

They found that she used more Latin-based words to create pompous and arrogant characters, and fewer for her idiots and for people under emotional duress. The narrator, meanwhile, uses the same percentage of Latinate words as Elizabeth Bennet, which makes her seem more sympathetic.

If you lot accept time to check out their all-encompassing analysis here , be prepared to exist blown away by the incredible consistency of her word choices.

Give-and-take Pick and Characters

In whatever case, information technology's not just highfalutin Latinate words that tin can be used to such effect. Imagine a character who regularly speaks with dangling modifiers. That could be hilarious. A teen grapheme who fails to utilize "lie" and "lay" correctly, meanwhile, would probably be more believable. In that location'due south already at to the lowest degree one child grapheme who conjugates verbs with a meat grinder. That would be Junie B. Jones, and she is hysterical in the very best sense.

Learn the Rules Earlier You Break Them

None of this tin can be washed well, though, if the aspiring author isn't sure of the rules to brainstorm with. Just as Picasso first learned to draw like Raphael before he ventured into wild new territory, truly great writers consider their words and the way they apply them, from the length of the sentences to the nature of the punctuation. This is why truly neat books are non accidents. They're carefully wrought miracles—anarchistic grammer and all.

Martha Brockenbrough is the founder of National Grammar Twenty-four hour period and SPOGG, the Society for the Promotion of Skilful Grammar. Her first novel, DEVINE INTERVENTION, came out June 1.

Books one-time reading antique back of book  image, PublicDomainPictures at Pixabay. CC Past 1.0.

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Source: https://www.quickanddirtytips.com/education/grammar/bad-grammar-good-fiction

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