To be, or not to be?

“Last weekend, I went to the Air Canada Centre to watch the game,” wrote Fred—our grammar instructor at Tuesday’s night class—who turned away from the blackboard to take stock of the expectant expressions on the faces of the students staring at his neatly scrawled words.

“Now, who can tell me: what’s the object of this sentence?”, he asked, as one eager student chirps up with “Baseball! It’s all about baseball!”

Blank looks notwithstanding, the Grammar for Editors and Writers class at George Brown College is actually (to me) an engaging subject. As nerdy as it may sound, it’s an interesting study of the English language, its many discrepancies and irregularities, and it’s ever-changing usage in everyday life.

In today’s fast-paced, wired and insanely jumbled world—where “rule of thumb” could actually be considered a valid writing style—it’s almost like grammar has become a raft in the middle of a heaving sea of Facebook status updates, cell phone text messages, instant messaging and hastily written emails, if u no wot i mean.

Call me a diehard, but I still prefer to take the time and effort to upper case the beginnings of my sentences, or punctuate where appropriate (and necessary!), and to spell correctly. I guess that’s why I’m enjoying Fred’s class so much.

Still, to err is to be human, so I’ve no doubt there’ll be mistakes here and there in the posts on this blog; hopefully, however, not as many as there were before I took this course.

So, bring it on, Fred. Tell me more about subordinate clauses and the proper use of parentheses. Make me think about where I should place my commas, semicolons and apostrophes—I’m in a subjunctive mood today!

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