For the Sake of Humanity

Warning: minor rant ahead. Proceed with caution, and please, take with a grain of salt. I don't think rants are ever completely bias-free, and this one is no exception.

I am an English major. I am also, among many other things, a reader, a writer, a young adult, a student, and a person. But the main thing you ought to know for the next few paragraphs is that I am an English major. I'm an English major who will specifically be going for either writing or linguistics. In other words, grammar is quite important in my line of study.

Attention world: I am an English major, and I am sick of the grammar police.

I know, I know, English majors have a reputation for being the grammar police. I will not deny that I have been guilty on many an occasion. But sometimes I read things that make me want to find the nearest wall and hit my head against it a few times.

Now don't get me wrong – I'm against bad grammar as much as the next English major. I volunteer to edit papers and other writings for my friends, and I do correct a lot of grammar in those cases – because that's where grammar correcting belongs.

Recently I read a few very interesting articles on the Internet about very different topics (one was regarding the suspect of the recent bombing in Boston and the other was about being a writer). After reading the articles, I scrolled a little further down the page to the comments. I still don't know what kind of decision that was, but whatever the case, I glanced through a few comments. I'm sure the visible comments have changed by now, but two of them stopped me. On the article about writing, one commenter pointed out an obscure grammar error. The one that stopped me on the other article was a single line about how obnoxious she found the writing style.

I wish I could sit down and have a cup of tea with these people. I wish we could just have a conversation about these things. I wish they could see that they missed it.

It breaks my heart that these two people who took the time out of their days to read through those articles completely missed the point. There were so many things they could have said, could have thought – they could have agreed or disagreed with these writers and their articles, either one – but instead, they missed it.

I don't mean to say that they're wrong or that they don't have a point, because there's a time and a place for those things. On the other hand, though, I can't help but be sad for them because of what they could've seen, but because they were too caught up in preferences and protocol, they missed.

So please, be willing. Be willing to look beyond the errors and opinions and dig a little deeper. Be willing to be see meaning beneath the surface mechanics. Be willing to push through and search for truth even when the particular form is a little tough for you to swallow.

Doing this isn't easy. I've tried, and I don't always succeed. It's hard. But if you do, I don't think you'll regret it.

Please, don't miss it.