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Mackenzie Parsons
ELANG 350
Prompt #3
November 10, 2016

Part-time Grammar Nazi

Millions of people throughout the world have inside them that little creature, the one that

purrs at the beauty of a correctly placed apostrophe and screams for vengeance at the sight of

should of instead of shouldve. That little creature is what we have endearingly named

grammar nazi. Of course, for some of us, the grammar nazi is not so little; we are the people who

become editors, the people who ride their massive grammar nazi creatures into glorious battle,

slicing away comma splices, annihilating misspellings, and dripping red blood-like ink across the

pages. All my life, I was proud to associate myself with these powerful editing warriors. Friends

brought me papers to edit, siblings asked me to go through their novelssometimes people

didnt even ask. I just laid into their papers will all of my perfect, grammarly glory, fixing their

sad grammar and poor formatting. I dont know when the grammar nazi creature inside me

showed up; I have always been an avid reader, and I suppose that, with every story I read, it grew

along with my soul and mind. And I was proud of it! To be honest, I still am. But my creature is

not the same as it once was.

There are, simply put, two kinds of grammarians: the descriptivists and the

prescriptivists. They are age-old enemies on the English-speaking battlefield, and grammar nazis

tend to side with prescriptivists, echoing the idea that there is a right way and a wrong way to

speak and write English. For most of my life, that is the realm in which I lived, whose battles I

fought, and whose rules I worshipped as law, until one day I had my eyes opened to the

marvelous world of Modern American Usage 322 at Brigham Young University. There, I was

introduced to my magnificent new weapon, Merriam Websters Dictionary of English Usage,

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which brought me to an entirely new understanding of the English language not as an

unbreakable law, but as a fluid, ever-evolving, living thing. There, I discovered that some things

my grammar nazi hated werent wrong. I was astounded. This language was beautiful! Where my

grammar nazi once howled at the sight of irregardless, the prescriptivist in me slowly

transformed from a sour old toad into a beautiful descriptivist princess who understood the

controversy over said word, but did not condemn it in writing. An error. Use regardless, states

The Chicago Manual of Style concerning irregardless (287), but my descriptivist princess

chose instead to turn to Merriam-Webster, thatin the changing, fluid language we call English

irregardless has become more and more acceptable (56465). So instead of murdering the

word with one fell swipe of a red pen, my descriptivist princess gave it a wink, left a note to the

author informing them of the words controversy, and then let it go free. Very soon, the grammar

nazi began to fade. But it did not die.

What my descriptivist princess saw and my grammar nazi did not is that language is

always changingand never the same, even all at once! Where aint isnt acceptable most of

the time, there is a place where it is. Some forms of English have become so different from

others that speakers of two different forms cannot even understand each other. Yet, it is still

Englishif only because that is what the speakers call their language. What I discovered in

Modern American Usage 322 was that English is fluid! Its fluidity adds color, history, and

culture to our language, our speech, and our writings. Because of this, prescriptivist choices

are not always rightand that is perfectly fine.

Thank goodness this life-changing revelation did not kill my grammar nazi. My glorious

editing monster is still very much needed. After all, for a language to function correctly, rules are

still necessary and should not be left behind. Amy Einsohn illustrates this point in The
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Copyeditors Handbook: All the style manuals agree on the following principles for creating the

possessive forms for common nouns: Singular common noun that does not end in ess: Add an

apostrophe and an s (134). Here, Einsohn describes a rule that should not be broken in any case

in English, because in doing so the writer would utterly confuse the reader and lose much of the

meaning of their sentences. So rather than chain and muzzle my grammar nazi, I simply chose to

let it rule my editing battles part-time. I became a part-time grammar nazi. It works hand-in-hand

with my descriptivist princess to edit not only according to the rules of English (those needed to

write clear, coherent works), but according to the current formor modern usageof our

language.

The final capstone of my transformation to a part-time grammar nazi is what John Kohl

calls the Cardinal Rule of Global English. The rule is as follows: Dont make any change that

will sound unnatural to native speakers of English (4). As a descriptivist, I often ask myself, Is

this okay? I mean, Ive heard it spoken, so . . . My deciding factor is that if I, as a native English

speaker, am confused by a word or phrase, or find it likely that other native English speakers will

be confused, then the word or phrase must change. Then my grammar nazi springs from his dark

den of style guides and manuals to offer prescriptivist solutions according to English rules. When

in doubt, use the cardinal rule! Using it silences any over-descriptivist thoughts and feeds my

grammar nazi. In so doing, I have found a comfortable balance where I am free to use English in

all its fluid, ever-changing kaleidoscope of uses, while still maintaining structure and coherency

in my editing.

In the end, I have found being a part-time grammar nazi to be incredibly rewarding. For

one, my brain isnt on pins and needles looking for every mistake that has to be corrected this

absolute instant otherwise all of the English gods will strike me down. Rather, I find myself
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slipping into the authors voice, appreciating the form of English chosen, and then editing to help

maintain that form and voice in order to be as true to the author as possible. And in the end, that

is what matters to me most as an editor: staying true to the author. I became an editor because I

was a grammar nazi monster. I have stayed an editor because I am also a descriptivist princess. I

love how every author wields English differently, and how every creation is unique in this way.

As an editor, I do not write the essays, the novels, the articles, or the plays, and so it is not my

job to force them down the throat of my grammar nazi monster, who regurgitates them into a

prescriptive, voiceless mess. It is my job to help authors say what they want to say, in the way

they want to say it, and in the best way possible. That is why I am a part-time grammar nazi.

That is why I am a descriptivist princess. That is why I am an editor.

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Works Cited

Einsohn, Amy. The Copyeditor's Handbook: A Guide for Book Publishing and Corporate

Communications. 3rd ed. Berkeley and Los Angeles, CA: University of California Press,

2006.

"Irregardless." In Merriam Webster's Dictionary of English Usage, 564-65. Springfield, MA:

Merriam-Webster, Incorporated, Publishers, 1994.

Kohl, John R. The Global English Style Guide: Writing Clear, Translatable Documentation for a

Global Market. Cary, NC: SAS Institute, 2008.

The Chicago Manual of Style. 16th ed. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 2010.