Question on Grammar
From a reader, with my comments below:So, I started this sentence with ‘so’! And I followed up by starting another with a conjunction. But do I care?
There are many people who object to these practices, condemning them as incorrect grammar. But does it really matter? Do these usages detract from the accuracy and meaning of the sentence?
And if I end a sentence with a preposition, it is something I am quite happy with. If I put the full stop (period) before or after quotation marks is there a change in meaning?
I try to adhere to the rules of grammar, regardless of whether or not an error would change a sentence’s meaning. Periods, question marks, exclamation points, and commas go inside quotation marks; colons and semicolons go outside. Though mistakes of this sort do not change the meaning, they would make readers wonder why I didn’t learn this stuff in grade school, along with everyone else.
I used to write proposals, asking prospective clients in Fortune 500 companies for tens of millions of dollars in exchange for marketing services, and, a month or so later, reports detailing what my company had done that was worth all that dough. Poor grammar was definitely not part of the correct “look.”
I don’t use extraneous words like “so” (in the sense above) in speech, and especially not in writing. Why? From Strunk and White’s Elements of Style: “A sentence should contain no unnecessary words …. for the same reason that …. a machine should have no unnecessary parts.”
I sometimes start sentences (even paragraphs) with conjunctions because I believe there are times at which this practice helps me convey meaning to the reader.
Re: ending sentences with prepositions, I was relieved to learn that there is no such rule. There is a rule that addresses the following old joke, but it’s actually the one mentioned above re: unnecessary words:
Incoming freshman at Harvard: Pardon me. Can you tell me where the library is at?
Upperclassman: This is Harvard. We don’t end sentences with prepositions.
Freshman: Sorry. Can you tell me where the library is at, asshole?
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