Grammar Goals: 5 Reasons to Use Proper Grammar in your Digital Writing

It’s a wordy world now that information rules the age. Is the notion of proper grammar ready to make a come back or fall permanently off permanently fall from the face of the earth?

Blogs, on-line magazines and newspapers, books from Amazon.com, texting — did we mention blogs? The written word certainly has made a triumphant return having receded from prominence during the days of Web 1.0 point-and-click iconography that seemed to go hand-in-glove with the MTV mind.  However, now that the young and formerly young find themselves (and one another) by speaking in thumbs via mobile device leet language, is proper grammar still of any consequence?

Speaking in Thumbs is no excuse

Many of us are familiar with the boilerplate disclaimers found beneath the body of emails sent by colleagues, friends and family:

Sent from crackberry. Pardon brevity.

Please excuse the typos & brevity, sent from my phone

Sent via BlackBerry – pls excuse typos

Or my very own two-liner with the word “please” in leet cum happy-face “emoticon” circa 1992:

Sent from my iPhone,
( Pls pardon brevity : )

Leet and typos aside, when one who writes gets back into the ballpark of using full-sentences with the intention of crafting communication suitable for the time-challenged consumer of digital info, wisdom dictates leaving behind the purposeful shortcuts in favor of reinstating the lofty goal of good grammar.

Five Reasons for Good Grammar in Digital Writing

1) People scan instead of read.  Dangling elements can be confusing, such as this elliptical clause:

When eight years old, the child’s parents sent him to work in the mines.

We knew that environmental toxins had been linked to early-onset puberty in girls, but a parent who is eight years-old?

When he was eight years old, the child’s parents …

Time spent rereading a language loop leaves the reader with less time to comprehend your overall messages as well as simply less time to spend on more of your writing.

2) Rules of the road provide you and your reader with focus.

Bike riders can afford to shut off their brain from paralyzing fear as they pull up to and through otherwise dangerous intersections mainly because they have studied and absorbed the rules of the road. Rules which are actually a compact or agreement with others to obey the same principles you have signed on for. Like the Zen quality of Olympic performance, your focus in writing can become effortless grace only after you’ve surrendered to the limitations and constraints of the situation; swimmers having to stay in their lanes means on less variable distracting from their inner regulation. Likewise for your reader, the familiarity of good grammar puts them in the zone to mindfully ingest what you’re trying to get across.

Which leads to…

3) Trust. It’s the susty thing to do.

To paraphrase film director Francois Truffaut, your audience wants to have some sense of what is going to happen at the end of the story, but the audience enjoys not knowing exactly how that end will come about; you need to gently guide your audience by the hand. This is really a matter of compassion, or taking into account the power and responsibility you have as the person steering the word-wheel.  Good grammar helps the reader trust in your attempt to communicate and that you have their best interests at heart. This emotionally and mentally integrated approach is a fine example of what we mean when we say that something is “susty,” while a lesser understanding of this concept is expressed by business professionals as “managing expectations.”

4) Email missives are easily misinterpreted. Short cuts don’t work.

E-mail recipients read into the meaning of colloquial writing. When the writer assumes that they “know” what another person will think, and thereby subscribe to a short-cut premised upon an imagined mind-meld, disaster can strike.  Relationships can end. Opportunities for good sex are missed. Explanations are offered in after-the-fact, back-pedaling, sitcom fashion.

Colloquialism, much like jokes, is used as a short cut to galvanize understanding within a group. To laugh at a punch line is to “get” the joke. However, getting a joke is not necessarily to fully grasp meaning. Laughter, the release of anxiety which has built-up during the joke’s set-up, can provide a catalyst for taking a fresh look at something,  but its solicitation by an author can also mask arm-twisting or attempts to shoe-horn readers into inadvertently taking the author’s position.

Using standard grammar is one element of creating a, trust-worthy “author-self” who in a self-possessed fashion takes seriously the matters at hand.  With grammar first as the foundation, a writer may then take a few cautious liberties while bearing in mind of #3 above.

5) Ego. Everyone has an opinion.

Everyone has an asshole and an opinion. Don’t give an opportunity to the blog commentators, mean-spirited e-mail forwarders or back-biting co-workers who are looking to tear you down.  Proper grammar let’s you hold your head up high and “dress for success” in writer fashion.