Introducing the Grammar Nazi...

First off - to anyone who might be offended by the title of this blog post, my apologies! It was a nickname given to me in college, which is why I use it here. Also, albeit this post is about grammar, my blog-writing style is far from "academically and grammatically correct,"- it is informal. :)

While in college, at Appalachian State University, I was an English major, with a minor in history. (That later was reversed, when I transferred to NC State, but that is a whole other story. While in those beautiful Boone, NC, mountains, I was an English major.) I have racked my brain, trying to remember how it all started, but twenty-years is a long time ago for this mommy-fogged brain to conjure up those memories. However it happened, within two months of my freshman year, I earned the reputation as "the person to edit your paper if you want an A." It started on my dorm floor, but random strangers asked, as well. Sometime, during that first year, someone must have referred to me as "The Grammar Nazi," because one of these random strangers approached me in the lobby of my dorm and asked, "Are you the grammar Nazi?" What?? "You know, the girl who edits papers that get As?" Oooook! I told him that I would only red-line what needed correcting and could give suggestions to make it better, but I didn't guarantee anything. (An aside, my roomie suggested I charge for these edits - $10 a paper went a long way to support my coffee addiction!)

Here's the thing - a type of irony, one might say - the papers I edited would get higher grades than my own! What?! I started reading what I wrote out-loud, which helped quite a bit. I find that I still have to do it for any writing that adheres to the academic world. My words of caution to even the best of the Grammar Nazi's out there: when writing your own book, short stories, etc. - chances are high that you will miss some of your own grammatical errors. When we read what we have penned, we read what we meant to say, which means our eyes can glaze right past the obvious comma errors! This is why it is all the more important to have that other pair of eyes to read your drafts. (All about these "other pairs of eyes" is in a previous posting, by the way.)

So - how do we know when we should employ those grammatically superior people? First of all, identify your purpose. Is it informal, like these blog conversations? Then, no. If you write a novel in a very personal or free-flowing manner? Not really. (By that, I mean sentences consisting of one word. One. Word. That's it.) If you are sticking to more formal writing, then it really should be edited as such. Simple slips, like putting the comma outside the quotation marks, are easily missed when reading one's own work.

How about tenses? While homeschooling three kids, something that I have noted lacking in many of the language arts classes (that they take virtually) are the basics, like keeping verbs in the same tense. If you are writing all in the past tense, don't accidentally insert a sentence like: The melody that she sings caresses my ears. Flipping tenses is not just a grammatical car wreck, but also confusing to readers!

Homonyms. For a brush up - words that sound exactly the same, but their varied spellings give them different meanings. They're/Their/There, your/you're, too/two/to, sea/see, and the likes are all homonyms. In writing, I think the biggest two are they're/their and your/you're. All little details that we hope our other pair of eyes will catch, but we should first. When in doubt, write out the contraction and see if it makes sense. (I will go to they're party. I will go to they are party. Nope! I will go to their party. Perfect, even if it is a boring sentence.)