Chapter 51: Modern grammar is a class war.

(This is an extract from STRONG LANGUAGE: THE FASTEST, SMARTEST, CHEAPEST MARKETING TOOL YOU'RE NOT USING.)

‘Some method should be thought on for…fixing our language for

ever.’

Jonathan Swift, 1712.

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Language changes. Grammar evolves. Complaints about it,

however, appear to be constant.

I was taught my grammar at school 40 years ago. I was taught

it by someone who’d learnt their grammar 30 years before that.

Should I still be bound by the same conventions? Should I be

writing like someone speaking from before World War II? If

society moves on, shouldn’t language?

There are two kinds of rules in the world: those which exist to

codify something to keep it regular and the kind of rules which

exist to make sure everyone plays fair.

Sometimes I think that when people criticise others for not

following the rules of grammar, they’re actually upset that

someone seems to be cutting

corners and cheating.

Any rule of grammar exists only to help make our meaning

clear. I don’t believe it should be the other way around: we

shouldn’t change how we speak just to follow rules if doing so

would restrict our ability to make our content and our attitude

better understood.

Now, I can choose to ignore a rule of grammar if I believe that

following the rule would make what I’m saying less clear. For a

company, it’s more complicated.

What could be more soul-sapping to a CMO than to have to

stop all the other parts of the efforts to grow the company, just

to have a conversation about whether there should, or shouldn’t,

be a comma in a sentence?

This is why it’s critical to have all the levels of your brand voice

clear at the beginning. Your language conveys more than just

its content. The language style you use also signals what you

stand for and the kind of world you believe in. Conservative

or progressive? Rule-bound or adventurous? Considerate or

gung ho? It’s those choices which should dictate how you codify

your grammar.

In Gulliver’s Travels, written by Jonathan Swift, Gulliver is confronted by a war between the Big Endians and the Little Endians. They were at war because they couldn’t agree on which end of the boiled egg you should crack open. It was a satire on religion. But there are equally dogmatic battles about grammar.

However, no grammar book I’ve ever read has addressed the

real issue that is swirling in the dark waters beneath the surface

of these arguments. Grammar is a class war: the ignorant

greengrocer is laughed at by the educated middle classes for not

knowing that he’s misplaced his apostrophe. But if we do that,

shouldn’t we also be laughing at the middle-class professional

who peppers their report with exclamation marks to emphasise

the presence of their weak jokes? When you swim in these dark

waters, you can catch your foot on a shopping trolley and get

into trouble!!!!!

The most important thing is to build agreement with your team

on your grammar styling. Take a look at the next chapter to find

the things to agree on.

Once you’ve agreed on them (hopefully with decisions which

reinforce your brand voice’s narrative), then there’s one more

thing to do: quickly laminate your company’s grammar style

guide and get on with the real work.

Just make sure you cover all of the things that are likely to

come up.

GRAMMAR’S RULES AREN’T ‘RULES’.

DECIDE WHAT YOU BELIEVE IN

AND MOVE ON

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