This is the third year that the Internet is celebrating National Grammar Day, and since our company is based on the premise that edited work is better than non-edited work, this sort of made up holiday should be something we buy a cake for, right?

By all means, we love the proper use of language here at the Editorial Department and we imagine the host of National Grammar Day, Mignon Fogarty, author of The Grammar Devotional, has good intentions (along with a bit of self-promotion) at heart, but unfortunately, grammar really brings out the elitist in some on the Internet.

For example, nearly every day on Facebook, I see that one of my friends (or possibly more appropriately, "friends") has joined some sort of grammar related group.  "I Judge You When You Misuse 'Their'", "Let's eat Grandma!' or, 'Let's eat, Grandma!' Punctuation saves lives." or something else of the sort.  Facebook seems like the second worst place to possibly start a grammar revolution (following Twitter, of course), mostly because you can spend hours on the site and learn precisely nothing in the vacuum of information and substance sites like Facebook provide.  Content be damned, but hey, the commas are in the right place.  When you're lazy with language (grammar included), the lack of attention shows, but all the interrobangs in the world aren't going to rescue a sentence, a paragraph, an essay, a book that isn't interesting.  Instead of championing new ideas, we create clouds of snobbery prepared to strike lightning-quick at those who might not have the same level of education we do.

Obviously, part of how I make a living is based on the grammatical arts, but is there some sort of sensible middle ground we can find between lazy error filled writing and the superiority of holding our ability to memorize a set of rules over others?