Knowing Write From
Wrong
A cure for grammarphobia.
By Patricia T. O’Conner
TWEENS & TEENS News October 2007
The fall quarter or semester means new clothes,
teachers, classrooms, books and friends. Yet,
for many tweens and teens, it also means grammarphobia.
In case you haven’t heard, grammarphobia
is the fear of grammar. This common phobia
attacks almost everybody at one time or another,
and it’s most likely to strike during
English or language arts class. Even people
who love reading and writing have been known
to get feverish and shaky at the prospect
of turning in homework with grammar or spelling
mistakes. Though writing may be enjoyable,
being corrected most definitely is not!
Grammarphobes, unite! It’s time to put
your fears behind you. Contrary to popular
opinion, grammar isn’t gruesome, ghastly,
gross or grim. Here’s why.
Let’s assume you like hearing and telling
stories. And that you enjoy joking with friends
and sharing the latest gossip. You probably
also like e-mailing and instant-messaging.
Well, what do you think makes all this possible?
Grammar!
Grammar is simply the art of putting words
together to make sentences. Whenever you use
words to express yourself, you’re using
grammar. You do this all the time without
even thinking.
So why think about it? Because good grammar
helps you convey the ideas you intend. If
your words aren’t right, or if they’re
not in the right order, the person you’re
talking to might get the wrong idea. This
can have embarrassing consequences.
I’ll illustrate by using what I call
the Bad News Rule. Here’s how it works.
You learn that your favorite Uncle has broken
his leg in a skiing accident. You send him
an instant message: “I heard you’re
bad news.”
Oops! You meant to say the news was bad. But
you’ve actually said that your Uncle
himself is bad news! You wrote “you’re”—
a word that’s short for you are—
when you should have used “your.”
Grammar helps us understand each other. It’s
like an owner’s manual for assembling
the words in your head. You have to put your
words together the right way if you want them
to make sense. They can’t do what you
want if they aren’t put together correctly.
What if everybody you know had a different
owner’s manual? How would you agree
on what your words meant or how to assemble
sentences? People with different grammar manuals
might as well be speaking different languages.
Communicating is similar to playing cards.
To make sense, we have to play the same game,
by the same rules. What are the rules for
playing the game of English? You already know
most of them without having to open a book.
Take the words burp and burped. You use them
to talk about the same activity (burping),
but on different occasions— Max burped
yesterday and he will burp tomorrow.
Another example is I and me. You use them
to refer to the same person (yourself), but
in different situations— I am busy!
Don’t bother me!
Another is iguana and iguanas. You use them
to talk about the same creature (a greenish-brown
lizard with beady eyes), but in different
quantities— Paris has an iguana! Nicole
has two iguanas!
I’ll bet you hardly noticed, but you
just had three grammar lessons: one in verb
tenses, one in pronouns (I like to call them
“stand-ins”) and one in making
a single thing into more than one thing. Grammar,
you see, is just a matter of making choices.
I’ll make a confession. I used to be
a grammarphobe myself. English was my favorite
subject because I liked reading and writing.
However, I still worried about the daunting
choices: Was I making the right ones? What
if I made a mistake? I’d have to get
corrected, maybe in front of the whole class!
And the terminology of grammar was so intimidating—
verbs, nouns, adjectives, adverbs, possessives,
apostrophes and all the rest.
Eventually I managed to cure my grammarphobia.
How did I do it? I stopped thinking about
what was hard and focused on what was easy.
I put aside the bewildering terminology of
grammar and created simple ways to explain
to myself how grammar worked.
Take verbs, for instance. If you can figure
out the rules of Quidditch, you can figure
out how to use verbs. They’re simply
the action figures in a sentence. A verb,
such as burp, tells you what’s going
on. Without a verb, there’s nothing
happening! All you have is a bunch of unemployed
words standing around with their hands in
their pockets.
If you don’t believe me, try not using
verbs. Can you ignore them? No you can’t,
because ignore is a verb! Can you hide in
the closet? No, hide is a verb, too! Can you
make them go away? No, make and go are both
verbs! Verbs are inescapable, as the following
poem of mine explains.
You Can’t Avoid a Verb
You can dissolve, combust, or turn to dust,
But you can’t avoid a verb.
You can read just until you bust,
But you can’t avoid a verb.
You can pout and whine. You can put up a sign:
“I’m busy! Do not disturb!”
You can mail yourself to Liechtenstein,
But you can’t avoid a verb.
You can leave the state and impersonate
A Russian, a Finn, or a Serb.
You can wave a wand and evaporate,
But you can’t avoid a verb.
You can hide amid a school of squid.
You can pack up and move to a burb,
Call FedEx and ship yourself off to Madrid,
But you can’t avoid a verb.
See what I mean? Verbs are everywhere! See
if you can pick out all the verbs in that
poem.
Nouns are everywhere, too. Nouns are names
for things like iguanas, for places like states
such as Ohio, and for people including Paris
and Nicole.
The thing to know about nouns is that they
come in quantities. They can be singular—
only one, like iguana— or plural—
more than one, like iguanas.
Without plural words, we’d have to talk
about one thing at a time. You couldn’t
eat a bag of nachos, you’d have to eat
nacho after nacho after nacho. But language
comes in handy. A nacho here and a nacho there
and— hey— you’ve got nachos.
There’s nothing we can’t have
more of, even a bagful, because anything that
can be singular can also be plural.
The lesson for today? Once you talk about
them in plain English, the problems of grammar
are a piece (or should I say pieces?) of cake.
Patricia T. O’Conner is the author
of Woe Is I Jr.: The Younger Grammarphobe’s
Guide to Better English in Plain English (Putnam
Juvenile). Find it on www.amazon.com.
