Dave Mitchell spells it out: Grammar rules matter (video)

Jun 142011

Here’s a clip that’d be worth watching just for its novelty value. It’s about grammar in general, spelling in particular, and it’s entertaining. You might even laugh.

It also says a few things I’ve been saying over the years, but with a wit—not to mention Brit accent—that makes it more fun to listen to than my flat Midwestern drone.

The best points (said better in the clip):

How you spell, punctuate and pronounce matters.

It matters because, when you make errors, people judge you. (This can happen, I think, on a level the judger might not even know about. It’s like when you meet someone in a rumpled suit or with dirty fingernails. Of course you didn’t like him any less for these tiny, tiny gaffs. Still, you can’t shake the sensation he’s somehow, just a little, off.)

While knowing the rules has become “a fashion and a fetish,” a thing that makes adherents feel smug and clannish, it’s more like signaling a turn; “it’s better than fashionable, it’s useful.”

One last point for those of us who struggle to spell correctly and to follow other, seemingly arbitrary grammar rules: The observation that really hit home was that bad spellers should spell everything perfectly because “without the arrogant assumption you don’t need to look things up, you’d look everything up.” I can hardly write a phone message or a shopping list without spell-checking it.

The clip, by the way, is from David Mitchell’s “Soapbox,” a weekly podcast from The Guardian.