Editors right what writers write, right?

Life ain’t easy as a grammar nazi.

Actually, I consider myself a wordsmith. More often than not I resist the urge to correct other people’s grammar – especially on social media – because I know that I’m not perfect. You might say I’m a grammar hypocrite because I frequently butcher the English language. Most of the time it’s intentional, but not always. Sometimes I’m just stupid and other times I get help from autocorrect. My stupid times usually come when I try to write after 8 p.m. or before my third cup of coffee in the morning.

There, their, they’re now, just calm down. Most of us know the difference in those words. I’ve learned that people who mix them up are either in a hurry, don’t care, or both. Constantly correcting them isn’t going to endear you to them, nor is it likely to change their writing habits. People who have been writing your when they mean you’re are not about to correct themselves just because you go all grammar nazi on them. They are, however, a step above those who write ur for your or you’re. Please note, if you’re a person who writes ur for your, I will go grammar nazi on you.

The irony behind me being a wordsmith or grammar nazi is that I couldn’t spell and was really bad with grammar when I was in school, college, in my early professional career, and so on. To this day I can’t tell you the difference between an adjective and an adverb and I have no idea how many participles I’ve left dangling because I don’t know what participles are.

Back in elementary school and junior high, we had to diagram sentences. That’s where you draw lines connecting the different parts of a sentence to show how they’re related. It was an exercise in futility for me, but I muddled through well enough to get a C- and move on. In hindsight, I think my teachers gave me a C- just to move me on. They did the same for me with math, but that’s an additional story for another day.

Writers write and editors right what writers write, right? I began my professional career as a reporter, highly dependent on editors to clean up my work. Two years into my first job at a daily newspaper I was promoted to news editor. I was good at the stuff on the periphery of the job description, such as managing schedules, deciding where stories would go in the paper, laying out pages, and stuff like that. When it came to editing copy, however, I had to “fake it ’til you make it.” Except I wasn’t faking. I didn’t fool myself or the reporters whose copy I had to edit. They sniped at my snips and didn’t stay mute about moot points.

Last Saturday I volunteered in the print shop in Villa de Austin at San Felipe de Austin State Historic Site. I found it comforting to know that writers and editors in the 1820s and 1830s were no better at spelling and grammar than I am.

In the days before spell checkers and autocorrect, a story would go through two to three editors before it went to print. I could edit a story for style, content, and length, but I needed other editors to do the spelling and grammar. Oh, I tried very hard to do that part. I even have a well-worn dictionary that is dogeared and highlighted with every word I had to look up, which is a lot. If I had to look up a word more than once, I underlined it in red. After a third time, I wrote the word on the Post-it note and stuck it to my computer.

Today, I can get by with all the built-in editing tools in Microsoft Word. I also google a lot of words I’m unsure about just to make sure they’re spelled right and I’m using them correctly. Even with all these tools at our disposal, I’m astounded at how bad many people are when it comes to writing, especially on social media.

When I see all the stuff posted there, I feel like I no longer have to fake it because I’ve made it. I don’t mean to sound pompous or arrogant; it’s more of a feeling or relief and accomplishment. After nearly 37 years as a professional journalist, I think it’s safe to say that I’ve learned enough about the English language to butcher it properly.

English is a complex and difficult language to understand, which is why it’s so much fun to manipulate. Double entendres are especially fun. One of my favorites is the Bellamy Brothers song, “If I Said You Had a Beautiful Body Would You Hold it Against Me.” Actress Mae West had a gem when she said, “I used to be Snow White, but I drifted.”

One of the best verbal acrobats was Yogi Berra. He said things like, “It’s like déjà vu all over again,” “If you come to a fork in the road, take it,” and “No one goes there nowadays, it’s too crowded.”

A big problem for most writers is writer’s block. Having writers block is a lot like mental constipation. But then something gives and you’ll have a vowel movement. When I do, look out. That’s when I’m likely to go all grammar nazi.