4 years in the past I made a decision I wanted to host a pop-up grammar-advice stand. The plan was easy: I’d sit on the streets of New York Metropolis and assist folks with their questions. I ordered a folding desk, drew a “Grammar Desk” signal and waited for the climate to chill. On a September day I walked to a small park close to my house constructing, propped up my signal, and commenced answering questions from passersby.
The concept was pure to me as a result of I’m a lifelong skilled grammar nerd. I’ve taught grammar and writing for years, written and edited professionally, and studied greater than 25 languages for enjoyable. Behind me, throughout Zoom calls, are cabinets of grammar books alphabetized from Albanian to Zulu. Some might imagine it’s a whole dialog killer however belief me after I let you know that folks love speaking about grammar — and combating about it, too.
That fall day, it took about 30 seconds earlier than I received my first query and the inquiries continued from there. Folks wished to oust their spouses’ errant apostrophes, cram commas into underpunctuated clauses (“Oxford comma or bust!”), raze previous tense types used as previous participles (“I ought to have ran, ugh!”) and extra.
However any rancor was largely feigned and the chats cathartic as I stored the Grammar Desk shifting across the metropolis over the next months. Fights over issues like “traveled” versus “travelled” (each are right) or “lose” versus “free” led to new friendships and a way of public fellowship.
The Grammar Desk is barely partly about grammar. It’s also about neighborhood, about shock, about humor (sure certainly, “poopyhead” is written as one phrase!). It’s in regards to the ritual of light, dorky debate with a shared sense of objective, centered on this factor we now have in frequent — language.
I’ve answered questions from writers, editors, young children, seniors, folks down on their luck, folks excessive on their luck, conservatives, liberals and scorching canine distributors. The Grammar Desk has been visited by lecturers, firefighters and a girl with a tattoo of a footnote on her foot. Lots of my guests have chatted fortunately with each other.
My husband started filming the Grammar Desk encounters for a documentary, and inside six months of my first pop-up in that park, we have been on the street. By the point the pandemic grounded us in early 2020, we had made it to 47 states.
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Folks argued good-naturedly wherever we went. In West Virginia, a person informed us that his spouse, who was standing subsequent to him, hated it when he ended a sentence with a preposition. She confirmed it. They have been grinning the entire time. They embodied the concept grammar teasing must be grounded in mutual respect or it gained’t work.
There are severe challenges to our public life that the bonding potential of dependent and impartial clauses can’t clear up, after all. Individuals should nonetheless coexist with different Individuals whose views they abhor. Lives lived an excessive amount of on-line are susceptible to misunderstanding and rage, to harmful oversimplification and dehumanization.
The truth is-checking the e-book I wrote about my adventures, I discovered extra about a few of the folks I had talked to on the street. I may by no means have guessed on the excessive social and political beliefs that a few of them held — the grammar chats stored all that at bay. No matter I really feel about a few of their concepts and actions, I’m nonetheless glad we had moments that created at the least a tiny hyperlink.
The small bonds that come from mowing somebody’s garden, holding an elevator door or making verbs agree with their topics help the bigger connections we’d like for our communities to thrive.
I’ve now been throughout with the Grammar Desk — to cities as small as 1,000 folks and cities of tens of millions. Begin speaking to me about God or politics as I sit there and I’ll politely remind you that isn’t what I’m there for. (Concluding preposition! Struggle me!)
Then I’ll ask in case you have a grammar remark or query. We are able to at all times cooperate on untangling a sentence or putting a semicolon within the good spot. Can comma fights unite a fractured nation? Perhaps not, however small issues gathered develop massive.
Ellen Jovin is the writer of “Insurgent With a Clause: Tales and Suggestions from a Roving Grammarian.” @grammartable
