Okay, don't get me wrong — I'm as rules-based and anal as any Lawful Good snot could be about things like grammar. I offer up grammar suggestions to a variety of people, often unsolicited, and it's only a sign that otherwise I'm generally a nice guy (and that my suggestions are both helpful and correct) that has kept me from getting poked in the snoot more often. Indeed, the irony is that people now send me stuff for a grammar check before sending it out to a large or important group.
Be that as it may, while all of the attached are accurate, and show English's complex but useful utility to express a wide variety of ideas and concepts and actions and relations with a tweak of a word here or there … I also remember that Grammar Is Not a Universal Law of Physics. Grammar, and word meanings, change over time. The "rules" are both prescriptive (telling you want you should do) but also more and more descriptive (telling you what others do).
Such tension keeps our communication comprehensible, but it also leads to folks getting lambasted for poor grammar when they are communicating perfectly clearly.
In some ways, the slow shift from prescriptive to descriptive grammar is, within bounds, a good thing, because it signals a moving away from Grammar Authority as more and more people communicate and set the rules on a consensus basis, based on what works, not on what some school in England dictates is The Truth.
So it would not surprise me to see a lot of these "mistakes" stop being treated as such in 20-30 years, except as humorous counter-examples of stuffy grammar types. On the other hand, I'm sure others will arise by then.
In the meantime, be aware that it's often okay to break some of these rules — but, like breaking the "rules" of what to wear to the office, or what subjects are appropriate at a dinner party, breaking them too often or in the wrong way or at an inopportune time may damage not just how you communicate, but how you're perceived.
The "mistakes" are worth reading because while it may be okay in some places to break them, it's better to know the rules so you can break them intelligently … and so that you understand what subtleties of meaning are conveyed when you use them correctly. #ddtb
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20 Common Grammar Mistakes That (Almost) Everyone Makes | LitReactor
I've edited a monthly magazine for more than six years, and it's a job that's come with more frustration than reward. If there's one thing I am grateful for — and it sure isn't the…
I hear all of those constantly (continually?). The only one I commit is the “moot” error, and I would argue that its meaning has changed. In fact, dictionaries include the definition that the article argues against (I checked online and in my copy of Merriam Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary, 10th ed., 1994).
@Avo – Yes, as I said, grammar and vocabulary evolve over time. So at first it’s laughably ignorant, then it’s huffily rejected by most folks unacceptable, then it’s cool except among the intelligencia, then it’s commonplace, then it’s the rule.
Hah! Lawful Good.