Why I am a Grammar Nazi

A friend gifted me a t-shirt that read, ‘I am silently judging your grammar.’ He knows me well: It is not so much that I measure people’s worth by how correctly they write and speak –though there is a bit of that too—but that I mentally proof-check and edit their sentences on the fly.

?It is a burden. I try to shed it, but it proves difficult. I will myself to focus on the substance of what my interlocutor is saying. I remind myself that he or she may be more proficient than I am in another language. I tell myself that I am being shallow. But to no avail. In the wiring of my brain, form and function are inextricably melded. For me, how a thought is expressed is as important as the thought itself. In fact, I believe that how something is articulated, to a great extent,?determines?the meaning of it: The expression becomes the essence of the substance.

?I studied mathematics in college. The vindication for my perspective lies, perhaps, in something I learned there—the notion of the elegant solution. In mathematics—as in engineering and programming—an elegant solution is one that uses appropriate methods or materials to produce the best effect with the simplest approach. There may be a less refined, less precise way to get the job done—like using black tape to keep bits of hanging wire in place—but in an elegant solution there would be no odd loose bits of wire in the first place.

?One example that comes to mind in the context of language is the over-used ‘very’. We often plonk it before an adverb or adjective to intensify its impact, but there is always a more precise word available that includes the sense of the very. Thus, ‘very good English’ is?not?very good English. Replace ‘very good’ with ‘excellent’ and, voila, you have excellent English. ‘Very confused’ by what I am saying??Use ‘baffled’ instead. You find this article ‘very boring’? Call it ‘tedious’. The word ‘very’ allows us to be lazy—to not take the trouble to find the more apt single word. Don’t succumb.

?Every pedant has his pet peeves. Let’s start with the alphabet: It is not the same as a letter. If I said my name starts with the ‘alphabet s’, I would be wrong. Because ‘s’ is not an alphabet; it is?a?letter of the alphabet. ‘Alphabet’ refers to the set of letters as a whole. The English alphabet, for example, contains 26 letters.

?And then there is marriage. If you say you will attend someone’s marriage, I assume you are into threesomes. Unless you plan to move in with the couple, say that you will attend their?wedding—the event at which the pair tie the knot. ‘Marriage’ refers to the ‘till death do us part’ part. Presumably, you don’t want to be a part of that.

?Mispronunciation is yet another vexation—starting with ‘pronunciation’ itself. People mispronounce the word as ‘pro-noun-ciation’. They forget that the o before the u in ‘pronounce’ is dropped in ‘pronunciation’. Other common errors: Mispronouncing c-o-u-g-h as ‘kuff’, m-o-n-k as ‘mawnk’ and b-u-r-y as ‘buh-ree’. They should be pronounced as, respectively, ‘koff’, ‘munk’ and ‘berry’. But you knew that, right?

?I believe that in language, as in art, you must know the rules before breaking them. Otherwise you are just spattering paint on canvas, the way some ‘artists’ do. Be like Picasso instead. He could—and, at first, did—paint flawless lifelike portraits of women. He later chose to portray them with their body parts not in the usual places and not necessarily in the usual numbers.

?Recently, I had the privilege of chatting with fellow English nut, Dr Shashi Tharoor. He told me that if the same English mistake is made often enough, it gets accepted as correct. He gave the example of ‘momentarily’. This word means ‘for a moment’ in classic British English. But in American English it has come to mean ‘in a moment’. Imagine the consternation of an Englishman on an American flight when he hears an announcement that ‘the plane will be airborne momentarily’. He imagines the plane going up ‘for a moment’, only to come hurtling down.

?Clearly, the world needs more English nuts to point out—and hopefully to prevent—such hair-raising language misunderstandings. And, of course, to teach people to communicate elegantly—without resorting to black tape.

—Sumanto Chattopadhyay

This article originally appeared in The Man.