Attack of the Grammar Police

When I wrote my last blog post I got hung up on a particular sentence:

“These days I need to call out a search party to find the school permission slip which should have been in yesterday”.

I read and re-read it because I couldn’t decide whether the word ‘which’ was correct. (Probably just one for the grammar pedants this!) I decided to have a quick Google and came up with this:

If the sentence doesn’t need the clause that the word in question is connecting, use which. If it does, use that. (Pretty easy to remember, isn’t it?)  (http://www.writersdigest.com/online-editor/which-vs-that)

Erm...not that easy really - or is it just me? I think I got my head around it eventually and decided that the use of the word ‘which’ is probably correct, but please feel free to correct me if I’m wrong!

My grammar is generally OK, (a liberal sprinkling of commas here, an apostrophe or two there,) but the internet grammar police will quickly pounce on anyone who fails to follow the rules - the Oxford comma and use of split infinitives being particular favourites in the ‘how to start an argument with an academic’ category.

I am a stickler for some of the rules though. Woe betide the person who uses the wrong form of their/there/they’re and, as I have previously pointed out on on my Facebook page, if you want to sell the thing that holds your pants, the word is drawers and not draws.

But it got me thinking about the way I was taught at school and the way kids are taught today.  I was at primary school in the 80’s and I don’t recall being taught formal grammar. I struggle with the difference between adjectives and adverbs and get bogged down with prepositions and conjunctions.

I could be misremembering but it’s also possible that the wine and whiskey have killed those particular memory banks. I do remember a High School English teacher having a hissy fit and forcing the class to write 25 sentences because ‘no-one knew how to use a full stop.’

My eldest (who’s 7) comes home from school talking about split digraphs and homophones and I have to do a quick Google to see what he’s talking about! The current education system seems very concerned with teaching kids ‘the rules’ and it makes me wonder where the creativity is. When the 7 year old talks about making a sentence ‘better’ by adding lots of adjectives I want to punch a wall.  Better how? To make it more flowery and verbose or to prove that you’ve swallowed a thesaurus for breakfast?

Rules are important. I understand that. But I’m not sure a 4 year old needs to know what a split-digraph is before he’s mastered wiping his own backside!

So next time I spend half an hour contemplating the use of ‘which’ or ‘that’, the question I guess I should be asking is, ‘Does anybody care?’