I hate it when I do this

But I do it anyway

If you’ve read this Substack long enough, you know I am not a paragon of grammar, a defender of the beloved language, or even all that careful when I write.

I’m human. Sue me.

But when I see the above kind of faux pas on public signs, I notice. I don’t precisely stand and shake an angry fist, but I almost wish I didn’t notice because it makes me seem — I don’t know — entirely too precious.

When I wrote for the Hartford Courant, on more than one occasion, I heard from a retired English professor who thought my grasp of grammar was subpar. At the time, I read her letters (this is how far back we’re going, people wrote letters) with an equal mix of defensiveness and a yearning that I’d had this professor in my formative years. I never learned what is a subjunctive clause, just as I never had tennis lessons. Instead, I picked up the racket and whacked away, learning as I went (or not).

I am older now and I have let a lot of that defensiveness go because part of growing up is not getting too bogged down in being perfect. These days, I look at language as I look at the Constitution. It is a living and breathing thing. The basic premise is bedrock, but we cannot hope to keep the same rules created by dead white men in the long-ago.

Did you ever read “The Canterbury Tales” in the original English?

Whan that Aprille with his shoures soote,

The droghte of March hath perced to the roote,

And bathed every veyne in swich licóur

Of which vertú engendred is the flour;

We don’t talk like that any more. We don’t spell like that any more, either. It is one reason I cannot read Jane Austen and please don’t take away my feminist decoder ring. The beloved author takes a page and a half to walk a character down the stairs. Throw in a car wreck, and I might get interested.

Regardless, there are some writerly rules that feel inviolate to me though I couldn’t necessarily articulate why. I think about that when I listen to people whose politics aren’t mine, who purport to Keep Things The Way They Are. They’re focused on rules that feel important to them, and people like us crap things up for everyone else.

I would argue that my focus on grammar has far less impact on people’s lives than do some conservatives’ concerns about gay or trans rights, say. But I get the instinct, sadly.