Grammar: the difference between knowing your shit and knowing you’re shit.

My friends call me the Grammar Bitch.

I’m sure it’s not offensive, most of my friendships are based on affectionate insults and I like to think I give as good as I get. It actually makes a pleasant change to be mocked for something other than being a pasty, vegetarian hippie with ginger hair and a Liverpudlian accent. In fact, if I’m excessively nice and polite towards someone, it’s a sure sign that I feel uncomfortable, because if I genuinely like a person, I’m much more likely to laugh at them and call them names throughout general conversation.

Besides, in a country where few natives seem able to write fluent and proper English any more, I have to say, I’m quite proud of the title.

As a writer and English graduate, I’m probably bugged by bad spelling, grammar and punctuation more than most people. Modern word processors may auto-correct mistakes, but that’s no excuse to become dependent on them and even they, in their infinite inhuman wisdom, get it badly wrong at times.

Why can’t people see that one comma, apostrophe or typo can change the entire meaning of a sentence?! There’s the famous story of the murderous panda that eats, shoots and leaves. And statements like:

A woman without her man is nothing.

Which could also be written as: A woman: without her, man is nothing.

Same words, entirely different sentiment!

Text speak is a particular irritant. I can understand and just about tolerate its use in text messages, where people may be caught on the move and have only a limited amount of characters to express themselves (although I, as Grammar Bitch, still insist on using complete, punctuated sentences even in this medium). But why introduce it to other forms of writing? While it appears lazy on the page, I can’t help but think that skipping vowels and purposely misspelling every word must take more time and effort than simply typing the correct words would...

It also seems like nobody understands or cares about the differences between there, their and they’re; where, were and we’re; you’re and your; two, to and too, or its and it’s. Apostrophes, rather than being used correctly, are instead freely and unnecessarily misplaced in pluralised words – I’ve seen many a shop sign advertising Pizza’s, CD’s or Flower’s and wondered what those items could possibly be in possession of. All of these examples can completely alter what someone is trying to express, or just turn it into total nonsense.

There’s also the problem of the misuse of words themselves. People say ‘should of’ instead of ‘should have’ and ‘am’ to mean ‘I’m’. ‘Affect’ and ‘effect’ have become interchangeable, despite conveying almost opposite meanings.

Some People, For Some Inexplicable Reason, Will Even Start Every Word In A Sentence With A Capital Letter, yet use a lower case ‘i’ when referring to themselves, or say they live in london with their sister, jane. I’m also starting to wonder if there’s anybody else left in the world that can spell definitely, as I see so many other variations of it. And these are just the things that bother me most; I could go on and on and on...

The art of letter writing may be dead, but there’s still plenty to annoy me in emails, and sometimes it takes all my strength not to proofread my news feed and correct everyone’s Facebook statuses. I often spot obvious mistakes in newspapers and magazines or on TV news reports, and find such errors from professional journalists unforgiveable. People regularly ask me why I don’t teach, and there are many, many reasons for that, but one is that marking badly written essays might just push me over the edge and drive me to permanent, angry insanity. I have a lot of European friends who can speak and write better English as a second, third or fourth language than some people I grew up with in Britain. For such a patriotic nation, I think we should be ashamed of that.

It’s not stupidity that causes these mistakes, just the widely held assumption that it doesn’t matter, and speaking in my role as Grammar Bitch, that makes me sad. I love the constant evolution of language, the introduction of new words, and the playing around with old ones. It’s a fascinating cultural phenomenon, and that’s why I don’t like to see it slipping backwards.  It took thousands of years and influences from a lot of other beautiful languages to develop our own, vast and complex vocabulary into what it is today, and it deserves to be preserved. It’s far too precious a thing to lose (NOT loose!).

If you’d like to see more of my writing, visit http://www.shelleyirving.com, where I’ll be adding new short stories and articles soon.

Find me on Facebook for updates http://www.facebook.com/?ref=logo#!/pages/Shelley-Irving/227455587342847