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Front Porch: Fewer grammatical missteps would mean less grimacing

Once again, I find myself compelled to wade into a grammar matter, or rather, egregious word usage.

But before laying out the current offense that is annoying me, I do have to begin with a caveat of sorts. I feel rather two-faced when I assume the Grammar Goddess mantle from time to time because I am guilty of so many technical errors myself. Like the use of incomplete sentences.

Writers tend to be granted a little more slack, for the most part, since this is our craft and we all have our own styles. In addition to my grammatical sin, I am also fond of the frequent use of the ellipsis (three dots in the middle of a sentence, which, in my case, normally indicates a sudden switch of topics or extra-long pause), long hyphenated compound adjectival phrases and a liberal uses of dashes.

And I like to start some sentences with conjunctions (did you notice?), which are words that connect things. Used within a sentence, they’re gold, but the more strict grammarians frown on them at the start of a sentence, though in that usage, they connect the new sentence to previous ones.

Oh, and I sometimes enjoy throwing in a fancy-schmancy word like egregious from time to time and putting commentary inside parentheses. And making up words.

OK, I’m a grammatical mess. It’s my style, and I am aware every time I stray from the straight and narrow. I plead that knowing the difference matters.

There are whole articles written about almost each and every variation/error of grammar, and I won’t belabor my own transgressions. I am comforted in this because, while I am not a noted writer, several of the big names that are, are guilty of all sorts of grammatical no-nos themselves. These peccadilloes have, in fact, become a hallmark of their writing style.

English novelist Jane Austen (“Sense and Sensibility,” “Pride and Prejudice”) is famous for double negatives. In her works, if a character wished to have tea, it would be said that she was not opposed to not abstaining from the beverage.

American poet e.e. cummings didn’t believe much in the use of punctuation or capital letters at all, whereas another American poet, Emily Dickinson, overused both. American novelist William Faulkner (“The Sound and the Fury,” “As I Lay Dying”) only supplied occasional punctuation in his long stream-of-consciousness paragraphs, making comprehension notoriously difficult. (He famously said that to understand, a person should read everything four times.)

So I like to think there’s good company out there for developing your own writing style.

That said, there are some things that are simply unforgivable and create in me a wince when I read them or when I hear them, the kind of ear pain that was first brought on in elementary school when a scratchy-chalk-on-blackboard sound filled the room when a classmate set out to make it happen.

And now to the subject at hand (finally) … the words less and fewer. I’ve drilled down on this before, but, obviously, not deeply or effectively enough. In conversations with (well-educated) friends, from broadcasters on TV, politicians speechifying and everywhere I look or hear or read – someone will get it flat wrong.

Weatherperson on TV noted there were less cars on Interstate 90 than expected. Less traffic, yes, but fewer cars. Economist opined on a national talk show that people have less dollars in their wallets. Less money, yes, but fewer dollars. Get it right, bub and bubettes.

The rule is simple – use less when referring to an aggregate (traffic, money) and fewer when referring to individual items (or items that are specifically countable, such as cars and dollars).

Is this obsessing? Hopelessly old school? Not worth the bother?

Hardly. With no apologies, I insist that there have to be some standards maintained – at least a few – some sense of proper grammar and speech that throw a lifeline to those of us still grieving the abandonment of teaching cursive writing and who experience genuine twitching in our ears when the less/fewer rule is mangled.

You know how you flinch when there’s a new-to-the-region TV journalist who isn’t yet up to speed on the pronunciation of all the local places and he or she speaks about that lovely green space on Spokane’s South Hill and refers to it as Mah-knee-toe Park? That person will get it right shortly, but imagine if he or she never does and you have to hear that park’s name mispronounced forever.

Those of us with visual and auditory grammatical sensitivity live in that zone. Please be kinder to us.

Voices correspondent Stefanie Pettit can be reached by email at upwindsailor@comcast.net.

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