[In honor of President Lincoln's birthday and teachers everywhere]

Last week and every other week your students brought forth on their assignments, a new grammar, conceived in Laziness, and dedicated to the pure delusion that all words are created equal.

Now we are engaged in a great Grammar War, testing whether our style rules, or any style rules so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great Guide to Style of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of this guide, as a Teaching Honor Ground for those who still teach the rules so that our language does thrive. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.

But, in a larger sense, we cannot dedicate — we cannot consecrate — we cannot hallow – this guide. The brave souls, living and dead, who soldiered on, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract.  The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they learned here. It is for us the blogging, rather, to be dedicated here to the yeoman’s work that they who teach this have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us — that from those honored here we take increased devotion to that cause for which they give the last full measure of devotion — that we here highly resolve that these teachers shall not have taught in vain — that this language, bound by rules, shall have a new birth of syntax — and that fine writing of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.

[Sincere apologies to Bob Dylan. This is surely an example of dragging genius into the depths]

Tangled Up In Rules

Late one mornin’ the clock was tickin’,
I was pushin’ the edge
Wond’rin’ if commas worked at all
Was a period right instead.
I think the rule says clauses together
Sure are gonna need help
I never did get that, like, English class
Grammar textbook was totally lame.
And I was sittin’ in the back of the room
Words floatin’ in a stew
Hearing ‘bout what I did wrong
Lord knows I’ve paid no dues, learnin’ you,
Tangled up the rules.

I was skimming for my first test
Soon to be confused
I thought my genius enough, I guess,
But my old teacher wasn’t amused.
Shredded my prose to splinters of wood
Said my verbs didn’t agree
Gave up on the first sad draft
Both agreeing it was best.
Endless errors stared back at me
As Evil was walkin’ away
I heard it say over my shoulder,
“Put a comma before that conjunction too,”
Tangled up in rules.

I had my eyes on punctuation
Pondered hyphen rules for a spell
But I never did study all that much
And decreed the time just hell.
Then I misplaced what to modify
Where it happened to drop ignored
Thinkin’ for a time about pronoun use
The choice between you or yours.
But all the while I must admit
Caring was far behind,
I seen a lot of lessons
But they never stayed in my mind, and it’s so screwed
Tangled up in rules.

I was lookin’ in an object’s face
But I saw an adjective,
Teacher was sweatin’ some kind of phrase
part of speech so not clear.
And later on as my crew bounced out
Tired grammar rules do the same,
Linking verb sitting there doing its thing
Said to me, “Don’t you know my game?”
I muttered somethin’ underneath my breath,
I studied the lines on the page.
I must admit I felt a little uneasy
When Dad was all, like, crazy, “This crap just won’t do,”
Tangled up in rules.

I put a subject on the page and fumbled for a verb
“A transitive needs an object,” they say
“but is this that kind of word?”
So I hooked up with intransitive
And wanted to modify
looked to use an adjective
not an adverb with L-Y.
So every one of my verbs work smooth
But should work smoothly, damn
Errors cluttered every page
Like it was written in the dark without a clue,
Tangled up in rules.

I rocked with phrases participal
put some pacing in my prose,
The cat eating in the cafes at night
And lights revolving in the air.
Then I started into dealing with nouns
And something inside of me died.
I tried to find a gerund, just one
And froze up inside.
And then finally even Mom gave up
Truth finally dawned,
The only thing I’d learned how to do
Was to keep keepin’ on like some people do,
Tangled up in rules.

But now I’m livin’ on my own,
I got to get a job somehow.
All the teachers I used to know
Still got no love to show them now.
It’s my right to reject it
It’s their outdated stuff.
Don’t know why they all kept trying,
I don’t know why they bothered to teach us.
‘Cuz me, I’m still writing bad
You know, that’s the Way I Roll
I always did think the same,
I just showed up for the minimum to get through,
Tangled up in rules.

**** If you are looking for the 10 most commonly confused words go here

[Sung to the tune of Barry Manilow's "Mandy]

I remember all my life
hearing how words modify
An adverb tells us “how”
The “why” to a question
Telling us degree
The “where” stacks up with

“When” as just another way
Modifiers like to play
Minus that L-Y
I have an adjective
I never realized
you change quick into quickly, oh Adverb

Well you wanted to modify action
but I forgot to add L-Y, oh Adverb
will you help me speak not loud but loudly
I need you today, oh Adverb

I’m playing but I’m playing nice
I walked away before L-Y
Caught up in a world of sentence mangling
My noun’s behaving bad
And teacher is crying, oh Adverb

Well you wanted to modify action
but I forgot to add L-Y, oh Adverb
will you help me walk not slow but slowly
I need you today, oh Adverb

Writing well’s a dream; I face the music
Drowning in red ink
my grade is falling, oh Adverb

Well you wanted to modify action
but I forgot to add L-Y, oh Adverb
will you help me stop not quick but quickly
I need you today, oh Adverb

[With apologies to Dylan Thomas, though I could argue that this is all about not going gentle into that goodnight]

Do not go punctuating on a lark,
Apostrophes don’t work just any way;
Rage, rage against abusing of the mark.

Though writers in their prose seem in the dark,
Because in school had learned no lesson they
Do not go punctuating on a lark,

Good souls, at “childrens” use, can’t help remark
Their red pens set to bleed into the fray,
Rage, rage against abusing of the mark.

Lost souls who will deny as “your’s” the spark,
And learn, too late, “yours” is the only way,
Do not go punctuating on a lark,

Poor souls, unlearned, will make the errors stark
Blank minds write “cant” not “can’t” for how they play,
Rage, rage against abusing of the mark.

And you, sad plural, there with added mark,
Curse! Tell us not “enjoy the egg’s,” we pray.
Do not go punctuating on a lark,
Rage, rage against abusing of the mark.