James Callan is a champion of non-snoozefesty content and an ardent foe of grammar Nazis. He’s a freelance content strategist, a trivia whiz, a dad, and a soother of troubled hearts and wayward souls.
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I’m so torn on this issue. You’re correct that English is a language that evolves, and often it evolves through manipulations that, at the time, probably seem egregious. At the same time, I grow weary of people trying to sound more intelligent by making every noun into a verb (“We need to language this, and how should we position that?”).
So, while I agree that people who go around correcting others just end up sounding like jerks, I’ve come to this conclusion: grammar is like design. If you’re going to break the rules, it helps to understand the fundamentals. And when you break the rules, it helps if you have a reason for doing so.
Lastly, I would add this: Sarah Palin might be a more intelligent woman than we give her credit for (I’m not arguing the case, but bear with me). However, her complete inability to articulate a thought in a well-structured, relatively grammatically correct, logical form just makes her sound stupid.
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Didn’t a certain publishing house power-that-be attempt a similar ploy on Kerouac’s On The Road?
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