Go forth! Create voice! Share your ideas! Be writers!

I wavered all night about whether I was going to write a post or not. I think the fact that I keep writing about how hard it is to write a post every night might be a sign that I need to quit writing a post every night. Or¹ maybe I just need to stop complaining and write.²

We went in a bit of a different direction with grammar today. I liked it. I want to keep digging into how grammar and punctuation can be tools we use instead of just errors we fix. In the book I’m reading, Mechanically Inclined, Jeff Anderson writes:

Grammar and mechanics are not rules to be mastered as much as tools to serve a writer in creating a text readers will understand.

That line was profound³ to me. I had never thought of it that way. Think about this: as a teacher, one of the ways I get to stroke my ego is by correcting mistakes. Students bring me writing, I “fix it.” Yawn. No one learns anything that way. And when you leave my class, you don’t have me as a crutch any longer.

No more!

Grammar and mechanics are now your tools! Go forth! Create voice! Share your ideas! Be writers!

1. Remember when we talked about not starting sentences with a conjunction? Like what, “rule”. How did my breaking of that “rule” add to my voice? [↩]
2. That’s probably it. [↩]
3. Remember that word from the voice list today? [↩]