Grammar Death

In case you haven't heard me use it, I have either coined or adopted a phrase (I can't recall which), which usually manifests as, "Sorry, I just underwent grammar death." This means that a sentence or paragraph or speech was grammatically coherent, but then the syntax slipped and the whole thing broke down into a mismatched phrases and words.

I can endure such phenomena in spoken English because speech is on the fly. And, actually, spoken English follows a different set of grammar codes (these ones intuitive) than written English does. But in actual prose, it drives me up the wall. I know I shouldn't get so terribly frustrated when people cannot express themselves in a structural pristine way, but it does just make my skin crawl. I'm not asking for perfect; I am asking for people to try.

What set this off? Witness (and bear in mind that this came at the end of a reasonably good comment on a Freakonomics blog, one which I was agreeing with):

"But frankly - I don’t think of this as a bad thing…critics have their place, and surely they, and bloggers, continue issuing their viewpoints - but for the masses who attend the theater - allow them their opportunity to enjoy something that is a rare treat - including the chance to give a standing ovation!"

Let me show you what a person could do with punctuation:

"But frankly--and I don't think of this as a bad thing--critics have their place, and surely they, and bloggers, may continue issuing their viewpoints, but, for the masses who attend the theatre, allow them their opportunity to enjoy something that is a rare treat, including the chance to give a standing ovation."

Essentially, I replaced the elispsis with an em-dash and replaced the dashes with commas. Why? Because there's absolutely no need for the sentence to be so chopped up. Commas, which the author used perfectly well beforehand, are fairly easy and in this case precise.

Thus, the comment underwent grammar death.

Now, I will use deep breaths and will be less easily upset by things that don't matter that much.