In grade school, I had an English teacher who said that poet E.E. Cummings understood the basic rules of grammar, but chose to break them later in his own writings. In college, I had a film instructor who emphasized that students need to understand the essential elements of photography before they venture into cinematography, which is far more complex. In other words, you need to learn to walk before you can run.
But, Loretta Gray, co-author of Hodges Harbrace Handbook, asks how rigid grammar standards must be. Are they like beauty – merely subjective? Or, are they like the laws of physics – unbreakable and unyielding? Literary scribes often take liberty with the written language. Even Hodges Harbrace Handbook “takes a nuanced view of proper grammar.” This probably will bother some writers who consider grammar a proverbial blind faith: it’s to be followed exactly and not questioned. But, Hodges essentially asks, what is appropriate in a given situation?
The issue can be tricky. Some writers, for example, insist 2 spaces after a sentence is necessary before beginning the next sentence in the same paragraph. Others say only 1 space is needed. Is a semi-colon a period in disguise, or just a break between clauses? Do you say ‘fewer books’ or ‘less books’?
If grammar is like math, then the rules truly are inflexible. But, languages evolve, both in written and spoken form. A decade ago “Google” was strictly the name of a web site. Now, it’s also a verb. Perhaps, notes Gray, people eventually will realize they actually have a choice when they think of grammar.
Chief Writing Wolf 