It’s happened to all of us. Being the kind, polite Canadians we’re supposed to be, we’ve greeted our acquaintances with an air of interest and general positivism. This conversation has happened to me so many times that I cannot bother to count. It goes a little something like this:
You: “Hi!”
Them: “Hi! How are you?”
You: “Good, you?”
Them: (with a condescending smirk) “I’m well.”
Just like that, you’ve been bested by them. You instantly regret greeting someone who felt the need to flaunt their perfect English in your face. Sure, you might be an English major, but they had to take the opportunity to snidely point out they are smarter and more proper than you. This may be the subtlest form of an epidemic plaguing all of humanity. That epidemic? Grammar Fascism.
Grammar Fascists don’t have to be as subtle as those ones in my first example. There are those who need to point out everything: from when you say “Me and Jim” instead of “Jim and I” or even instead of “Jim and me.” Grammar Fascists ravage the confidence of those less obsessed than them or even those who simply couldn’t care less. Some of them even know what the Oxford comma is.There is no worse feeling than having a perfectly civil conversation, only to have the person you’re talking to tell you that you saw zeh-brahs in Africa, not zebras.
I have a startling confession to make. I am a reformed Grammar Fascist. I spent a dark, harrowing year as the editor of my high school’s newspaper. During that year, I dashed the dreams of so many aspiring writers that I may have rid the world of the next Shakespeare and Hemingway unintentionally.
I was the worst Grammar Fascist you could imagine. If you used an ambiguous pronoun, I would tell you that every time you used one, a puppy would die. I used to roast people over spits for comma splices, condemn them to the fiery pits of Tartarus for changing tenses, and, worst of all, I used to say “zed” if anyone made reference to the letter “zee”. I think the low point of my Grammar Fascism had to be the time I sent in my own edit to an article in the Toronto Star. They had used a semicolon incorrectly.
You may wonder how my reform came about. It was quite simple, actually. My friends, a group of the most intimidatingly smart and talented people you could ever meet, laid things out for me. They remarked that though I could correct their grammar, they understood quantum physics or were acclaimed artists or singers and did not really need their intelligence mocked by someone whose greatest triumph was telling the vice principal that if the school invested in air conditioners, girls would stop wearing low-cut tops.
The truth is that, yes, if someone says “Me and Jon were walking in the park really quiet,” I could say “Jon and I were walking in the park really quietly,” but what’s the point? Is grammar even going to last? I hear people actually saying “brb” and “ttyl” in conversation nowadays. How long until today’s language becomes Shakesperian?
I will end with a message to Grammar Fascists everywhere: You may know the rules of comma use, how to properly utilize a semicolon, which sentences are run-on, how to improve syntax, what the heck syntax even means, and even how to properly spell manoeuvre. But guess what? Nobody cares. If I need grammar advice I’ll turn to my copy of The Elements of Style.
