GRAMMAR

I Shall Slap You With This Wooden Ruler if You Misuse a Preposition

Grammar Rules Change Just Like Everything Else

Photo by Jonathan Kemper on Unsplash

You may say that grammar is based on rules designed to make language consistent and understandable.

Yeah, not so much. Both our words and how we glue them together bend and warp in the currents of time. What once grated upon our ears becomes commonplace and acceptable. Language gatekeepers have to begrudgingly edit their tomes, and purveyors of software like Grammarly have to recognize new patterns.

If you are young, you may already chafe at grammar rules imposed by the crufty old boomers who review your work. You may be surprised when they insist that a word or phrase you used does not have the meaning that you deployed. You know damn well that it does.

Protests that the usage is everywhere across the internet are pointless; we boomers don’t even know where most of the younger folks are found, so we certainly aren’t aware of your language changes.

What you may not know is that boomers mangled the words and grammar of previous generations. Not only did they do that, but they also changed what words mean and how those words may be arranged with each other; they happen to like what they changed, while your changes…