Every Day Is Special: March 4 – National Grammar Day

March 4 – National Grammar Day

Posted on March 4, 2019

The creator of this day is also the author of Things That Make Us [sic]. That's a pretty clever title, because when we quote something that is spelled wrong or that has a grammatical error, we want to make sure that everyone knows that the error was in the original, NOT our own error...right? We indicate this by typing "[sic]" right after the quoted error.

Sic is a Latin word that means "thus."

Here is an example:

In July, 2018, Donald Trump tweeted a complaint that his presidential tweets are picked over as if his political opponents were hunting for errors. You'd think he'd try super hard to make this particular tweet error-free...

But instead he tweeted this:

"After having written many best selling books, and somewhat priding myself on my ability to write, it should be noted that the Fake News constantly likes to pour [sic] over my tweets looking for a mistake. I capitalize certain words only for emphasis, not b/c they should be capitalized!"

Trump meant "pore" over his tweets; to pore means to study something closely. This is what "pour"ing over his tweets would look like:

These days, a lot of people are urging us to use good grammar because - ultimately - the whole idea is to communicate ideas accurately from one person to another - or to a whole lot of others. When we use bad grammar, we can confuse people or change the message.

On the other hand, it's actually better to address the content of someone else's message than to focus on typos and errors. It's not very friendly to act like the "grammar police."

But what about a grammar pirate?