Spelling and Grammar: How Critical Are They?

Grammar Nazis, Comma Crusaders, Noun Ninjas; we all know one.  But, are they there to help us, or are they there to humiliate us?

Nearly any topic of discussion on social media these days will draw a plethora of comments supporting each side of the argument. In most cases, the argument will devolve from a simple discussion to each side hurling insults. When the usual insults fail to have the intended result, the involved parties will resort to scrutinizing each other's grammar for intellectual superiority.

In other instances, one may see an obvious grammatical error and offer a correction preceded by an asterisk. This, too, is generally poorly received. Whoever made the error in the first place either didn't know it was wrong, knew and didn't care enough to correct it, or did it intentionally to troll for Grammar Nazis.

The question is: does it even matter in the first place? English is one of the most difficult languages to master, and its complex rules and synonyms are the biggest source of angst for most people. Many native English-speakers are functionally illiterate: they can speak, read, and write, but they would have trouble passing a written test on the language.

The purpose of language is to share ideas. If one person speaks or writes something, and another person understands the idea, the language has done its job. Spelling and grammar provide clarity and disambiguation, but the consequences of their misuse are not exactly life and death.

On the other hand, most of what a Grammar Nazi will correct are the most basic Spelling and Grammar rules. They can't stand to see a misplaced apostrophe or a run-on sentence, but it's not often that someone takes the time to correct a dangling participle or a misplaced modifier. We are taught at a young age how to tell the difference between "your" and "you're", but it is one of the most common grammatical errors on the internet.

So, why the crisis? Why can't we just ignore poor grammar? I can't speak for every Grammar Nazi, but I can explain my viewpoint on the subject. I went to high school in the late-nineties (Class of 1999). I have not sat in an English classroom since the end of the first semester of my senior year, a little over eighteen years ago now. I was far from an ideal student then, too. I left a bad enough taste in my English teacher's mouth that she was still holding a grudge six years later when my little brother got to her class.

As I stated above, most of the mistakes commonly corrected by Grammar Nazis are basic spelling and punctuation rules. We learned the difference between "there", "their", and "they're" in elementary school. We knew plurals and possessives long before middle school. We learned that a period ends a sentence, and a comma indicates a pause. These are the things that turn everyone into an English teacher on the internet.

It's because these errors are so basic that they are singled out for correction. They represent the lowest tier of competence in English. And if you got through school without learning the basics of English, what other subjects did you ignore? Do you know what date men first landed on the moon (July 20, 1969)? Who cares, right? These days, it's easier just to buy into a half-assed conspiracy theory that we never went to the moon. Do you remember the chemical composition of salt (NaCl)? Could you figure the area of a seven-inch circle if you had to (38.465 square inches)?

In my text messages and personal Facebook posts and comments, I take certain liberties with correct grammar and punctuation. Sometimes, the character limit on Twitter requires me to get creative to get a point across. But, whenever possible, I try to use the language in the way it was intended to be used.

First Chapters: "The Deseret Diversion"

The Deseret Diversion




A POG Novel

by Tim Williams

Chapter 1

Rain was the last thing I had expected to have to deal with in Lake Havasu City the week before Spring Break. It was the last thing anyone had expected to deal with, from the look of things. A torrential downpour was a rare occurrence there, where rich kids came from hundreds of miles away to spend their parents’ money on booze and weed, and poor kids came to pretend they were rich kids. 

Spring Break didn't officially begin until the following week, but that only stopped college students from crowding the bars and restaurants on that Thursday afternoon. The rest of the party crowd was still present. There were more polo shirts and golf visors than I could count, with sunglasses that cost more than a night in a four star hotel. 

I sat in the cab of my truck, watching the raindrops hit the windshield and combine with the dust, running down the glass in orange streaks. My old, square body Chevy looked ridiculously out of place among the luxury vehicles to the left and right, but it was the only viable option I had at the moment.

Back in January, I had sold my Nissan Frontier and bought the cheapest old Jeep Wrangler I could find. It was a YJ model, built in 1991, which was good, because the roll bar had straight, diagonal support kickers, rather than the ninety-degree bends that later models got to provide mounting points for rear seat shoulder harness seat belts. My first modification had been eliminating the back seat, negating the need for seat belts. 

The Jeep was currently in my driveway, undergoing a rebuild to prepare for the fiftieth annual Easter Jeep Safari in Moab, Utah. My friend Jason and his girlfriend Stephanie were coming out from the Eastern edge of North Carolina for it, so I decided to go all out. Stephanie had bought a WJ Grand Cherokee, and Jason had built it into an overland expedition machine, so I would need something that could keep up. 

Work on the Wrangler had progressed slowly, limited by the time it took me to heal from getting hit by a van in Alabama on Thanksgiving. The last of the bracing had come off of my left shoulder at the end of January, and I had spent the past few weeks regaining my full range of motion. It still hurt to stretch it very far or to put any excessive weight on it, but it was a world of improvement over what my December had been like.

I was on the lookout for a guy by the name of Jimmy Gilligan. According to the photo on file, he looked as dumb as his name sounded. He had a black teardrop tattoo on his cheek, although his record didn't show any jail time served, beyond a night in the drunk tank for a DUI charge in 2003. 

Jimmy was wanted for failure to appear at a paternity lawsuit, but I was there to serve him with the subpoena for another case. I was disappointed to be reduced to tracking down a deadbeat dad, compared to some of my previous assignments, but getting back into the mission rotation required me to take what was offered. My last mission had ended in a clusterfuck that resulted in a lot of unwanted attention for me, not to mention a near-death experience and ten weeks of healing and rehabilitation. I was determined to get this mission done with and get back to doing actual investigative work.

I glanced over at the subpoena papers on the bench seat next to me, on top of the bro magazine I had bought to conceal the envelope. So far in my almost thirty-five years, I had never been served with papers for a court hearing. All I really knew about the process was what I had seen on TV. I took a gummy worm out of the bag on the dashboard and ate it, washing it down with a drink from the water bottle beside me. The absence of cupholders in my truck made resealable bottles a necessity.

I had already been to his stomping grounds in Scottsdale, where a co-worker of his had pointed me toward Lake Havasu City. Jimmy was what happened when parents didn't hold their kids responsible for their own actions. He was “employed” in his dad's tech support business, but they paid him whether he showed up or not. 

In the eyes of his parents, Jimmy Gilligan could do no wrong. They didn't seem to care that their son was the alleged father of two children, or that neither mother was over the age of twenty. At thirty-two, he was only a few years behind me, and I used to feel dirty in my late twenties if I found out that the girl I was talking to was under twenty-one. 

Some might have called it jealousy, my dislike for coddled adults like Jimmy Gilligan. After all, following the Thanksgiving FUBAR, my own family had done an interview on the local news, in which they had called me a monster and essentially disowned me. As far as I was concerned, the feeling was mutual. I hadn't spoken to any of them since then.

My ass was starting to hurt from sitting in the truck so long. The foam in the bench seat was deteriorating, and I could feel the wire structure inside. From the day I bought it in Ohio the previous summer, I had planned to replace the bench with two buckets and a center console, but the Jeep had taken priority.

As the storm began to subside, I got out of the truck and walked across the street to a row of bars and restaurants. His co-workers had told me that Jimmy liked to hang out at one bar in particular, where he considered himself to be some kind of royalty. They hadn't seemed very interested in helping me, under my assumed cover as a college classmate of his from UCLA. When I got pissed and dropped the act, however, they couldn't seem to throw him under the bus fast enough.

The bar lived up to my expectations, in that it was a complete hole. The soles of my boots stuck to an unidentified substance the floor as I walked in. After examining the layout of the place, I took a seat on a stool at the far end of the bar. It afforded me a clear view of the front entrance and the pool tables to my right. 

Above the bar, a dozen flat screen TVs showed various sporting events. February and March were the worst time of year for me sports-wise, as basketball was about the only thing going on. I had a lifelong hatred for basketball. Basketball players were pansies, compared to football players. They would fall on the floor, acting mortally wounded, if they were so much as touched. While I understood the strategic importance of drawing a foul, it just seemed like an underhanded tactic to me. 

Not seeing Jimmy anywhere in the bar, I needed to set myself up to linger for a while. I ordered a plate of nachos and a Rum and Coke from the bartender. She was one of two who were working the bar area, both dressed in men's dress shirts and bowler hats. The shirts were made of a light enough fabric that their bras were clearly visible underneath, as if I needed more proof that this bar specialized in attracting sleazy assholes.

“Anything interesting in your magazine?” the bartender asked me.

She had me dead to rights. I hadn't so much as opened it since I bought it. I hadn't actually read a bro magazine since I left Afghanistan, so I had no answer to her question.

“Probably just the same old shit they always print,” I said. “I'm not exactly in their demographic anymore.”

“So, why do you have it?” she said.

“It's for a friend,” I said. “I'm supposed to meet him here this afternoon, but he's always late as hell.”

“You must be a hell of a good friend,” she said, handing me my drink. “Sitting around here waiting on him all day.”

“And I get to try your nachos,” I said.

“Wait a minute,” she said, suspiciously. “You're not one of those mystery shopper guys, are you?”

“Me?” I said. “No. Look, you would have busted me already. The process doesn't work if you know who the mystery shopper is.”

“Tell that to the last asswipe they sent in here,” she said. “Got a girl fired because she wouldn't give him her number.”

As I was thinking of a witty reply, I glanced toward the front door. It opened to reveal three guys around my age, joking and shoving each other. It was obviously not their first visit to a bar that day. 

They took seats on the stools nearest to the door, waving to get the bartenders’ attention. The one in front of me rolled her eyes and pulled out her order pad. The other one went over to help the new customers.

“Is that your friends?” she asked.

“No, but they look like they might enjoy this magazine,” I said, taking a sip of my drink.

“Well, just pretend you're ordering something complicated,” she said, sliding a menu across the bar to me. “I can't stand those assholes.”

“Maybe they're mystery shoppers,” I said. 

The door opened again, and in walked Jimmy Gilligan. The file had him at five-foot nine, but he barely looked five-foot six. His jeans were ripped, his sandals were just about worn through, and he wore a Guy Harvey tank top over a white wife-beater. I never understood why guys who did well for themselves worked so hard at looking homeless. 

“Just when I thought it couldn't get any worse,” the bartender said.

Rather than sit at the bar, he spun a chair around backwards and straddled it, leaning forward toward the table. From the look of things, he was expecting company. I figured I better do what I needed to do while he was alone. 

“Hold that thought,” I said, taking another sip and sliding the envelope into the menu.

I took her order pad and the menu and went to Jimmy's table. He was playing some sort of Roulette game on his phone and ignored me at first. I cleared my throat to get his attention.

“Waiting for friends, or is it just you this afternoon?” I asked, holding the pad as if I were taking his order. 

“They said they were on their way, but fuck 'em,” he said. “They can order when they get here.”

“Would you like to see a menu, sir?” I asked.

“Shit, I don't need to see the menu,” he said. “Much business as I've given this place, there's a burger named after me on the menu.”

I flipped the menu open to the burger selection. There were a few options named for celebrities. Johnny Carson, Larry Fitzgerald, Bill Clinton, and even Drew Carey had burgers named for them. Sure enough, hidden among all of those famous names, there was a Jimmy Gilligan burger. It was a classic double burger with grilled green onions and ranch dressing on it. Had I been there for any other reason, it might have sounded good.

“Well you're obviously not Larry Fitzgerald,” I said. 

“Nope,” he said. “Bring me a Jimmy Gilligan, medium, with fries and a Boston Lager.”

“That's you?” I said, trying to sound awestruck. “Jimmy Gilligan? I love that burger.”

“Accept no substitutes,” he said. 

“Outstanding,” I said. “Then you'll probably recognize this.”

I handed him the envelope and pulled up the camera app on my phone. He opened the envelope and pulled the subpoena out. The puzzled look on his face turned to anger as he realized what he was holding.

“The fuck is this?” he asked.

“You've been served,” I said, snapping a picture of him holding the paperwork. “Congratulations, it's a girl.”

“You son of a bitch,” he said, dropping the papers. “Cara put you up to this?”

“Don't know who that is,” I said, tossing the menu down on the table.

It had been my first experience as a waiter, completely unrehearsed, and I was glad I had never had to do it for a real job. I turned away and took the bartender's order pad back to her. As I was handing her a twenty-dollar bill to cover the drink I had barely touched and the nachos that most likely hadn't even been made yet, I was hit from behind and thrown against the bar. 

Jimmy Gilligan had shoved me and snatched my phone out of my hand. He was running for the door, holding his hat down on his head with one hand while he hauled his embroidered jeans up with the other. I sighed and looked at the bartender.

“Now I gotta chase this motherfucker,” I muttered, pushing off from the bar. 

As I burst out the door, I looked both ways for Gilligan. Naturally, he was running in the opposite direction of where I had parked my truck. My combat boots weren't exactly ideal for running, but they were a hell of a lot better than his flip flops were. Rounding the corner of the sidewalk, he lost the left one when he looked back to see if I was chasing him.

Using the light pole as a slingshot point, I reached down and picked up the flip flop. His run had devolved into a hobbling gait, and I was able to catch up with him easily. As soon as I was close enough, I tackled him into the side of the building. Using his body as a cushion, I rolled out of the tackle and smacked him as hard as I could upside his face with the flip flop. I saw my phone on the ground where he had dropped it, and went to pick it up. 

“Stay the fuck away from me!” he shouted.

After verifying that my phone still worked, I stuck it in my pocket and turned back to him. It took everything I had not to crack up laughing when I saw the imprint the flip flop had left on his face. It was a perfect outline, with squiggles from the tread, and even a circle on his cheekbone where the piece between the toes penetrated the sole. 

“I gotta know,” I said, catching my breath. “What did you plan to do with my phone?”

“Throw it in the fucking lake,” he said, rubbing his cheek and refusing to look me in the eye.

“Did you want an ass-beating that bad?” I said. “What was the point?”

“No phone, no picture, no payment,” he said. “Screw you like you screwed me.”

“It's 2016, tool,” I said. “Apparently, your grasp of technology is as weak as your pull-out game. The picture automatically uploaded to the cloud as soon as I took it. Even if you had succeeded in destroying my phone, all you would've accomplished would be pissing me off.”

“Well, what the hell am I supposed to do?” he whined.

“Try showing up for your fucking court date, for once,” I said, turning to walk back to my truck.

Deep down, a part of me felt uneasy about turning my back to him, almost certain that he would get up and try something. But there was another part of me that wished he would try something. I kept walking, checking my reflection in every window and car mirror I could see for any sign of trouble.

When I got back to the truck, I sent the picture of Gilligan holding the subpoena to my administrator, Alicia. While I waited for a response, I checked on the shipping status of the rest of the parts I had ordered for the Jeep. One crate had been dropped off that afternoon, and the rest was scheduled for delivery the next day. As soon as I closed the tracking window, my phone rang with Alicia's caller ID.

“How'd you get him to pose with it?” she asked.

“Theatricality and deception are powerful agents,” I said vaguely, grabbing a gummy worm out of the bag and eating it.

“Whatever,” she said. “Good to see you haven't lost a step. I'll try to find you something better next time.”

“Look,” I said. “I know you have to ease me back into the rotation, but serving court documents is bitch boy work.”

“I agree,” she said. “And, unfortunately, it doesn't pay worth a shit. A grand for finding him, and fifty bucks for serving the papers.”

“Bummer,” I said. “I'll tell Nicola to pick up some Ramen noodles on her way home.”

“Very funny,” she said. “We'll be in touch next month.”

“Alright, later,” I said, hanging up.

I ate the last two gummy worms in the bag and tossed it into the passenger side floor as I started the engine and put the transmission in gear. My left hip was aching from the sudden sprint to catch Gilligan earlier. It was going to be a long drive back to Flagstaff.