Think you know grammar, punctuation & spelling? If you're from MD … probably not
I recently had the pleasure of helping judge an essay contest, in an age when anyone capable of maintaining a written thought for more than 14 words is worthy of at least an honorable mention.
The first I initially disqualified under general grammatical standards on the theory that if you’re going to write about a basketball scholarship, a family picnic and a failed suicide attempt, these events need to be separated by at least a comma.
But by the time I reached the fourth, the first wasn’t looking so bad after all, given the others’ propensity to ignore grammar altogether. Fortunately though, I know grammar still exists, at least in a theoretical sense, because I was recently sent the results of a national survey ranking each state’s fluency in grammar, punctuation and spelling.
The No. 1 state for good grammar was California, where the leftist government probably pays people not to use double modals. And oddly enough, Louisiana came in at No. 9.
Really? How do you know whether sentences like “House ya mama ’n dem, day scarin’ up a fais do-do?” are correct or not? James Carville may be the greatest grammarian since Henry Watson Fowler, but we’ll never know, because we can’t understand a word that he says.
The news release accompanying the survey says, “Grammar skills are something we are all taught early in school, but does everyone retain that knowledge as they age? (We) surveyed more than 1,800 Americans to learn about their grammar skills and what they still remember from high school. Maryland didn't rank so high.”
Indeed, Maryland was fourth lowest among the responding states, below even West Virginia, which just seems wrong.
Actually, based on my experience as a certified essay-contest judge, I can’t even agree with their basic premise that grammar is something that’s universally taught in school to begin with, much less “retained.”
If they are indeed teaching grammar, they should feel free to try a different pedological model. Like all problems with modern education, I believe this can be traced to the prohibition of smoking in the teachers’ lounge. I firmly believe it is impossible to endure more than 90 minutes of howling 12-year-olds without escaping to a smoke-filled room to re-establish equilibrium, preferably with the assistance of organic relaxants.
But Maryland can’t be worse than West Virginia. Can it? I grew up in, and remain fiercely proud of, the Mountain State. Hank Williams sang about us in his song “Country Boys Can Survive,” and he knew what he was talking about. You notice he says “we can skin a buck and we can run a trotline,” not “we can skin a buck and we can conjugate ditransitive verbs into the past-continuous and present-perfect tenses.”
So how does Maryland get sucker punched by a state where the past tense of know is “knowed,” and anything that is impressive is more likely to be described as “right good?”
Hard to say. But I believe Maryland’s distinct and insular communities tend to bring down the average in multiple ways.
Consider a general statement of affirmation in the three most prominent Maryland regions:
Western Maryland: “You got that right” (var. “I heard that”).
Eastern Shore: “O S M R 2.”
Baltimore: “Knock yo’self a pro, hon, that gray matter backlot won’t perform us down.”
You see the problem. Maryland lacks that one cleanup hitter in the lineup that can boost the overall team average.
I think you could also make the argument that the people who are sitting around with nothing better to do than respond to surveys are not going to be, how to say this politely, the sharpest pick in the dental kit. Bill Gates is not taking time out from his quest to eliminate malaria to take grammar surveys.
Nor is it really news that we’re bad at grammar, and most people no longer seem to care. Or as we said in West Virginia, “It don’t make no neverminds.”
Tim Rowland is a Herald-Mail columnist.
This article originally appeared on The Herald-Mail: Maryland falls behind West Virginia among word nerds, apparently
