Introduction to My Study of English Grammar
It’s taken me 72 years to realize that I really don’t know a great deal about my own native language (American) English. It’s never too late to learn something new, so for the foreseeable future (I don’t have a strict timeline for this endeavor) I’m going to take it upon myself to learn a thing or two about the English language. Here’s a perfect example, I don’t know if the word “language” in the previous sentence should be capitalized or not.
Be that as it may, I’m going to try and learn something (finally) about proper grammar, punctuation, capitalization and word usage. Wish me luck. Since I love to write, this can only help to improve my writing. Also, the rebel in me says there is so much bad writing on the internet today that I don’t want to be a part of that, so, I better get my proverbial stuff together. Becoming a better writer is my goal. Better speaking is another matter. So many people judge you by your words, I think I will continue to talk just like I always have, so as not to alienate anyone that I haven’t already managed to alienate by this point in my life.
An interesting side-bar here: I’m using the book “The Best Grammar Workbook Ever!” By Arlene Miller. This is not her first grammar book. She knows what she’s talking about. The book opens with a 100 question pre-test. I took the test and got a score of 68 out of 100. I consider that to be pretty good given the circumstances of my education and upbringing. (Probably above average compared to most people.) I asked my partner to take the test also. I consider her to be better educated and smarter than I am. I thought I would get smoked. Oddly enough, she scored 68 also. We both got a good laugh out of that! (It made me feel better too.) When I finish this course of study, I will casually suggest that we both take the final test… to see if our pre-test scores were a true reflection of our relative grammatical strength. I don’t plan to tell her I’m undertaking this study, and she doesn’t read this blog either… I’m looking forward to the results of the final test. That may be a bit harsh of me. I will confess that I studied for it… at some point…
This is the introduction to my grammatical study that follows, I make no claims about the “correctness” of the grammar used in the above paragraphs.