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Hold tight, people (and maybe put the kettle on); this is a full length rant about a habit I love to hate.  Do you know who I love to hate?

Well, if you’re reading this thinking “actually, that should have said ‘whom I love to hate’!  This writer has shockingly misused the subject pronoun and must be stupid, or at least uneducated…”, then I love to hate you.  Sorry, guys and gals, but other people’s written style is none of your business.

Let’s start by distinguishing grammar, the order and form of the words we use, from style, the watchword of pedants everywhere.

Grammar is found in every scrap of spoken or written language, ever.  Style is found in manuals and in arguments that I have with strangers on the internet.  If you have ever posted on here, chances are I’m talking to you.  And before you start, I do know the basic rules of English.  And the subtle ones.  And, crucially, I also understand them.

Grammar is just something people know.  You learn it before you can tie your shoelaces, in between doing pictures of your mum with all her arms and legs coming out of her head.  There’s a lot of confusion about over what verbs and nouns are, but if you know that “I’ve just ovened a pie” doesn’t make sense and neither does “that explode was really loud“, then you understand nouns and verbs perfectly.  You use them every day.  Personally, I hardly ever stop using adjectives and so on, although many people wish I would.  You recognise nouns and verbs every time you hear or read any sentence.  If you want to be able to explain the difference, pop a comment under here and I’ll do you a post about it.  It’s really much easier than everyone makes out.

Style is something you learn at school.  I’d like to be clear that I think it’s of key importance.  Especially at a university.  You need to write formally, and that starts with getting “your” and “you’re” the right way round.  It also means no more dangling modifiers: if you say you bought “delicious fruit and tampons” from the shops, you sound like you’ve been munching on sanitary items.  Get it right, people.  If you don’t know how, find out.  People will judge you on it for the rest of your professional life, because it shows you care about accuracy and detail and good first impressions.

Going around criticising other people for the way they talk (or tweet, for that matter), on the other hand, is really a waste of a good tree’s hard work.  If someone says “could of“, you know perfectly well that they meant “could have”, so where’s the actual problem?  If you’re irritated, then I’m sorry to hear it, but it’s not really a problem for anyone else, is it?  And if you’re going to make a fuss about “fewer“, try to remember that continuous quantities are measured in discrete units: “less than ten minutes” is correct, because the thing you’re counting isn’t minutes, it’s time.  I’m trying to spare you the embarrassment of ‘correcting’ someone who was right all along.  You’re welcome.

Some of the rules that get waved around a lot don’t even make sense.  “Me and Harry went to the shops” is much maligned for no logical reason.  I know you wouldn’t say “me went to the shops“, but that is a different sentence from the one in question, and so contains different words.  Try thinking of “me and Harry” as a sealed unit.  Also, as you’re not speaking in Latin, I would encourage you to freely split infinitives, and end sentences with prepositions if you want to.

I suppose I have two main points.  Firstly, not everything you learned at school is actually logical.  If something doesn’t sound wrong to you, that’s probably because it isn’t.  Secondly, and more importantly, it’s nice to be nice.  If someone wants you to tell them what you think about their medium of self-expression, I’m sure they’ll let you know.