My Speech at the Grammar Police Retirement Ceremony

Blech.

           “I know.  Some people will call this giving up.  I am accepting failure.  This is what happens to the best of all of us. We realize the walls we pound our fists against are too strong and too well-built and that there is just not enough energy and time to change the world.  It is the bittersweet elixir of growing old.

            I hereby give notice that I am retiring from the Grammar Police.  I know, it may come as a shock to many.  It does not help that our numbers are shrinking year after year.  It took a lot of years of deliberation and soul-searching.  In the end, I believe it is best for me if I step away.  In my own life, I will carry on.  Remaining ever vigilant, I will do my best to avoid murdering the English language. I know I will make mistakes, but I will not succumb. I will use a variety of words; I will not try to boil all human communication down to 25 catch phrases and clichés.  However, when it comes to policing the world and pointing out obvious grammatical errors, I am no longer the man for the job.

            The tipping point came recently.  I was watching a local news story about a protest.  There were parents and teachers trying to get attention from t a local school district, and they wrote handmade signs for the gathering.  I saw one parent’s sign and it read:  Help Suport Our Community.   From my couch at home I said aloud: “Two p’s, please”.

            Now, I was correct.  Suport has two p’s. But, in that grand scheme of everything that actually matters in this world, and that I personally support the measure to raise more money for schools, who gives a rat’s ass about how the words were spelled on one sign?  I lost perspective, empathy, and sympathy.  All because I can’t get over how so many people do not know how to use grammar properly.  I still believe it matters.  But life is an ongoing process of choosing battles.  Grammar is far down the list.

            I believe in the struggle of the Grammar Police.  Clarification of our shared language is essential to clear communication.  However, I did forget one thing along the way.  Not all communication is important.  Some of it is as disposable as candy wrappers.  The words may be important, but the actual back and forth between two eleven-year-olds, or a bunch of guys at a country/hip-hop/rock concert, or a family of goobers who are minding their own dad-gum business is not important and has no need to be policed.  I still believe all public signs should be under scrutiny.  If you have a restaurant, please learn how to spell restaurant.  A movie theater marquee should not misspell titles they can clearly read from a poster.  

            So I leave with my last public pleas for grammatical sanity.   I have heard in the past few years in the rise of nouns created by adding ‘–ness’ to an existing adjective.  The problem is, those adjectives were already created from a noun.  There is no need for anxiousness and dangerousness.  We have anxiety and danger.  Comfortableness? It’s comfort. They are acceptable now because of a generation of fuck-ups repeating them over and over.  But I digress. 

            In the area of clichéd phrases I have but one simple request.  Please stop using the Nazis and terms like jackbooted thugs to describe people and events that do not even come close to the severity and brutality of the Third Reich.  The chick on the phone from Verizon that put you on hold is not the same as an army that murdered millions.  Also, we can refrain from using “Sophie’s Choice” to describe a difficult decision.  I realize this began is sarcastic jest, but it has moved into standard use now and I just don’t think choosing which one of your children should live or die is the same as deciding thin or pan crust at Pizza Hut.

            I will close with this.  I have fought hard.  I raised my children to appreciate the often contradictory rules of the English language.  They realize it is unique in the world; it is a living, breathing, and evolving language.  There are just some tendencies that sour our collective use; and that these misuses can eventually impact human thought. We need all the words we can to speak our minds effectively.  I believe in the cause.  But I am turning in my badge.”

            Oh yeah:  “A LOT IS ALWAYS TWO SEPARATE GODDAMNED WORDS!!!”