Introduction

What is Grammar And Why Study it?

Before diving into a definition of grammar, I’d like to invite you to recall a time when you felt misunderstood.

Misunderstandings happen for many reasons. Sometimes, you may not know the right words to express your idea, or your idea may be too complex to explain easily. I’m sure you’ve also experienced speaking to someone who isn’t very motivated to understand you. This is always very frustrating, right?

If you have experienced this type of frustration, you may be pleased to discover that while you’re in university, your professors, instructors, and peers are generally motivated to understand your ideas. In fact, since reading and writing occur asynchronously (meaning the reader and writer do not have to be together at the same time), you may find an academic audience is better able to entertain completely new ideas. This is because the reader can mull over your points and evidence at their own pace.

Sometimes, however, and especially in writing, students find themselves unsure how to bridge the gap between their ideas and presenting those ideas accurately so that other people can easily understand. Knowing that you are giving your ideas their best chance of being accurately understood because you are expressing yourself more clearly and precisely to other people is one benefit of learning grammar.

Being aware of grammar rules helps you avoid ambiguity in written language. Most of us have come across grammar memes online, such as “Let’s eat Grandma!” By simply including a comma to indicate a “direct address,” the writer can skillfully save this imaginary grandma from a grisly end. (If you haven’t seen these, here are a few of them.)

Moreover, sentence structure and punctuation can have serious implications in real life. In 2017, a labor dispute in Maine between a group of dairy delivery drivers and their employer hinged on a single comma; based on the ambiguity caused by that comma, 120 dairy drivers were awarded $5 million in unpaid overtime they were due (you can read about that case here). Even if you don’t expect to be involved in such a situation, you’re likely to face official documents throughout your life, such as contracts, wills, loans, and more. Being aware of grammar can help you understand these documents with more confidence before you sign.

Now that we’ve addressed the utility of grammar, we can turn to what the word grammar means. Grammar is basically a set of rules that govern how we combine words and punctuation to create written language. Although written English is modeled after the spoken language, written language is significantly more structured. For this reason, some students initially find studying grammar a bit stifling.

It may feel that way at first. Especially if you haven’t had the opportunity to study much grammar up to this point, your writing voice may sound stiff and awkward compared to how you normally speak. Consider that when speaking, you have well-practiced tools to convey meaning, such as facial expressions, tone, hand gestures, and the ability to immediately correct misunderstandings. In writing, your words may seem stark and alone.

Understanding grammar is akin to understanding how to read and write sheet music. To the uninitiated, a sheet of music looks like squiggles, dots, and lines, but we all know the beautiful sounds these symbols represent, especially in the hands of a skilled musician. As you practice and come to understand how the nuances of grammar provide opportunities for increased clarity, your writing will more precisely mirror your unique ideas and allow you to share those ideas more clearly with others.

Sometimes, students protest that the rules of English grammar seem arbitrary. This is true in the sense that grammar is an effort to describe and regulate an extremely complex communication system made up organically over hundreds of years by multiple generations of people. If you consider how differently you or your friends speak compared to older people, it makes sense that English grammar is somewhat complex because we need to be able to communicate with our grandparents while also being able to read books and laws written hundreds of years ago. It is necessarily an imperfect system.

Because of its idiosyncrasies, you may be surprised to learn that grammar represents the scientific study of how language works. A knowledge of grammar provides us with vocabulary to discuss how the language works. For example, grammar includes morphology, which describes how we may subtly change the form of a word to use it in different ways. The word Google is a great example of how morphology works in English. When capitalized, it is a proper noun (the name of a company and also the name of a search engine), but the word google is also an action verb, as in the sentence “Just google it!” This flexibility with word forms is one of the strengths of English grammar and is addressed in more detail in the “Verbs” section of this book.

Another important element in the scientific study of English is syntax, the relationships among words and symbols within a sentence. Many writers know to introduce a quotation with a comma. Those who are aware of the significance of syntax, however, know that when a writer uses a colon to introduce a quote, it subtly implies that the quote carries more consequence, that it is a hefty piece of evidence. Awareness of syntax allows readers and writers to communicate with increasing precision. The “Punctuation” section of this book explains elements of English punctuation that many students find confusing, such as commas and apostrophes. There are many more elements in grammar, and they all combine in unique ways to form your writing voice.

The following video from Khan Academy gives a useful general introduction to grammar:

In his 1985 essay “How to Write with Style,” American novelist Kurt Vonnegut advised writers to “sound like yourself.” This advice may appear out of place in a grammar book since using “correct grammar” seems like it would dictate the rules of how all writing should “sound.” A few of these rules are very strict! Throughout school, you may have been chastised for using whom incorrectly, for ending a sentence with a preposition, or for ending a sentence with a coordinating conjunction like or, but, or and. Yet these particular rules, when followed to the letter, can make a person’s writing sound extremely formal, which is a stylistic choice rather than an absolute standard. For a few audiences, it may be necessary for writers to follow such strict grammar rules to establish credibility. Most readers are not so exacting, though; they understand that standards can vary based on the topic, audience, purpose, and many more factors.

In the same essay, Vonnegut concludes by counseling writers to “pity the reader,” since reading is “an art so difficult that most people don’t really master it even after having studied it all through grade school and high school — twelve long years.” Reading is the best way to notice what helps or hinders readers. When you read something amusing, striking, upsetting, or even just interesting, notice the stylistic choices the writer is making. Consider what you like or dislike about the style, and how the style affects your opinion of the writer. Similarly, if you find yourself stumped by a sentence or if you suddenly realize that you stopped paying attention a while ago, reflect on the chain of events. It might be that you misunderstood a word, it might be a boring topic, or it might be written in a dense, difficult style. Reflect on where the disconnect occurred, and you’ll not only learn about your own style preferences: you may also become aware of gaps in your knowledge or reading comprehension, which you can then take steps to address.

I advise you to follow Vonnegut’s advice with an eye to your own goals. A great goal for most students is to sound like yourself (with, perhaps, a bit more polish depending on your purpose), while remembering that your main duty as a writer is to relate your ideas as clearly as possible. If you keep your reader’s ability to clearly understand your ideas at the forefront of your mind as you edit your writing, you cannot go wrong.

This grammar guide is intended to give students at the University of New Mexico resources for communicating their ideas clearly, and the exercises in the book allow for practice with grammatical concepts. You can anonymously engage in the interactive exercises. Please enjoy!