In a world full of technology that corrects our spelling and gives us GIFs to express ourselves, why do we need to learn grammar?
Because I love the idea of expressing myself in words on paper, I’ve never really struggled with this idea. (But then, I was born in a world that thought the microwave oven was all the technology we would ever need.) At the same time, I’ve been asked this question so many times that I know there has to be an answer. And there must be a good answer or schools would have stopped teaching grammar at all by this point.
Here’s what we need to know — communication is a gift. Our ability to express ourselves through language is the very thing that sets us apart as humans. We experience a range of complex emotions and our urge to share what we are feeling with others is what leads us to crave the tools to do it. So… we study the best ways to do that very thing.
And now you’re here. This won’t be a regular grammar blog. Oh, we’ll cover parts of speech and sentence structure, but I want to talk a lot about WHY we do certain things the way we do. I want to discuss WHY it matters. It is so easy to get inside your own head and feel very alone because you can’t find words for what you are feeling, but language connects us. It leads us to ask questions… and it helps us to understand the answers.
American author Nathaniel Hawthorne said, “Words — so innocent and powerless as they are, as standing in a dictionary, how potent for good and evil they become in the hands of one who knows how to combine them.” That’s right! When you know how to use them, your words can be a weapon… or a salve.
So, let’s explore words. This page will have a place for questions, ideas, thoughts… Let’s discuss grammar here and make our words more powerful.
The first item on the agenda? Parts of speech, of course. Why do you need to know them?