My old English teacher set up a group on Facebook called Grumpy Grammarians. In case the title doesn't give the game away it's for pet language peeves.

In response I posted on it these two poems.

The second one was written this morning just for that group. The first one was written about thirty years ago about a colleague in my office. (With a few of the rhymes and a bit of the metre adjusted this morning,)

Gramaticallty Part 1

This is the sad tale
Of a man with a problem
With expressing his meaning on paper.
He writes, as he speaks
As each thought occurs
In a disorganised and nightmarish caper.

He writes everything
In an eccentric English
Uncluttered by spelling or grammar
Which renders his prose
All fractured and broken
Like glass that’s been hit by a hammer.

Prepositions he’ll often
Ends sentences with.
Or else with conjunctions he’ll start.
Then they changed tense
From present to past
And soon will have been falling apart.

Some of his sentences,
With no sign of a verb.
Others may last for a page.
Understanding the depths
Of his subordinate clauses
Would take teams of linguists an age.

He’ll parenthesise phrases
(For no reason at all)
And randomly insert ; punctuation
And when seized by the urge
Will not hesitate
To invent new words and convestulations.

The multiple lapses
In ackurate speling
Vary from suttle to strainj
And singular verbs
Follows plural nouns
Within his syntactical rainj.

Some problems arose
When a sentence he’d written
Read ‘These facts are almost correct.”
He’s meant to say ‘all most’
And that the meaning was different
Was something he failed to detect.

He can never grasp
That some adjectives can’t
Be altered by ‘more’ or by ‘most’.
He’ll write, confidently,
That this is ‘uniquer’
And that that’s the ‘uniquest’ he’ll boast.

He’ll imply that ‘implied’
Means ‘inferred’ and vice versa
Infer that ‘inferred’ means ‘implied’.
He’ll mix ‘insure’ with ‘ensure’
And ‘supply’ with ‘apply’
Thus insuring confusion supplies.

Misplaced apostrophe’s
Appear within plural’s
Or sometimes half way through a wo’rd,
But when theyre required
By a sentences syntax
Inevitably, thats when theyre spared.

The worst is to come
When all this has been sorted
And the reader divines his intent
For without single exception
What he has written
In no way resembles what he thinks he meant.

Gramaticality Part 2

I used to believe that if you inferred that “infer” meant “imply” then your school
Had failed in its function of teaching you things that might stop you seeming a fool.
I considered that knowing “enormity” meant wickedness rather than size
Was something you’d know from all of your studies, if you’d thought education a prize.
Punctuation perfection was an aim to pursue, without need for dispute or for fuss.
The inviolate rules had been set down in stone, carved by the saintly Lynne Truss.
The importance of spelling could not be overstated and everyone had to take care
That complement wasn’t used in compliment’s place and to never mix “there”, “their” and “they’re”.
A sentence should have, as the barest of minimums, somewhere within it, a verb.
Participles never should be left unattached. These were habits that all ought to curb.

But all that was a long time ago and I’ve changed. I’m no longer the pedant of old
And when faced with such faux pas I no longer have even slight inclination to scold.
If most of the world splits infinitives and such then who am I to declare that they’re wrong?
It occurs to me now that if majority rules, then the rest ought to follow along.
It’s no use being champion for correct use of “whom” if shouting alone from a hill,
Or scattering commas with Victorian vigour as if that’s the way it’s done still.
I hear people state that it causes confusion and present examples galore for the claim
But placed into context it isn’t so simple and to pretend that it is is just playing a game.
So nowadays I state it forthright and clear, and without any trace of my old hesitation
With or without these rules being broken, there isn’t a problem where there’s communication.

This message has been edited. Last edited by: BobHale,

Love it, Bob! I worried until the last paragraph - I didn't think you were a pedant.

Shu is on a FB group where they talk about "grammar mistakes." I can't remember the name of it, but they are mostly from England, and boy are they pedants!

Shu says the name of the FB group that he is a member with is Extreme Pedantry.

It is interesting to me how these pedants love to rant about the same old things - split infinitives, ending sentences with prepositions, etc. It reminds me of that Apostrophe Society (was that it?) that brought arnie, Bob, CJ and Richard here.

Hi, Bob!

1. This stanza reminded me of Henry James' prose:
"Understanding the depths
Of his subordinate clauses
Would take teams of linguists an age."
I always credited my enjoyment of his novels to my antique rural-'50's study of diagrammed sentences.

2. Convestulation?

3. Poem 2 is a nice description of the transit from prescriptive to descriptive.

convstulation? consider the whole line

I looked up "convestulation" and found this (in Google, no less).

Haha, ditto, Kalleh.

Bob: um... portmanteau words?

A wholly made up word just for the rhyme and the joke, I'm afraid. I could create some post hoc justification for it but I'm pretty sure i didn't go any deeper than that at the time.

I like the idea of Gramaticality 1 & 2, being very different. I was trying to see which I preferred, but not sure I have a preference.