I have a dirty secret: I hate grammar!
Somehow, despite being an avid reader, and probably one of the best English students in whatever school I was in, I somehow managed to sneak through the system without truly learning what a gerund was, a dangling participle, a clause. Am I the only one?
To remedy the situation, I have turned to Lynn Truss and E.B White.
Truss is particularly helpful, being the newer book, and thus perhaps more relevant to today’s writer, but E.B. has his place.
For example, it is hard not to love a teacher who, when discussing -ize says “Do not coin verbs by adding this tempting suffix.”
And really, one does have to trust the author of Charlotte’s Web, who wrote in such a glorious, albeit Spartan, shed overlooking the ocean and without the benefit of being able to check the internet to see what one’s friends ate for lunch or discover the latest cat video. Really, he had it tough, right?
Hmm. It’s tempting to want to writerize in just the same way….
How about you? Any grammar horror stories?