General Grammar Irks and Two Specific Things

I always cry a little inside, and express my distaste a little more overtly in some cases, whenever I visit Facebook and internet forums that have comments with absolutely no vestige of grammar or even spelling. I always wonder if the poster actually wants to be misconstrued when he leaves his post with no punctuation.

If I do not have good grammar, not only can it imply I am stupid and do not care about the message I am trying to convey, but it says my readers are not important to me. When I at least take the time to properly capitalize and spell check my message before posting, it states I want my readers to think I at least want them to receive my message and then think higher of me as they read it. My reader might think, "Hey, this guy took the time to make it as easy to read as possible by following the rules of English, perhaps I should give him a moment and read it all the way through and consider what he wants to tell me." Because I want you to think better of me, it asserts that you are important. If you are not important to me, I won't care what you think of me or what you think of my writing. Having good grammar says, "I want you, my reader, to think of me as someone trying to communicate a specific message with you, not as someone you have to guess constantly at what I am trying to express because I do not follow the rules of English."

I should make the note in some scenarios and internet games there is a need to communicate as quickly and with as few keystrokes as possible. Even in those situations, there are fairly strict syntactical rules on how a message can be formed. I am not talking about such instances. I am speaking of when you are attempting to exchange ideas with one or more people in a less demanding atmosphere, like Facebook, a forum, or a private message. Do you have to have perfect English? No, nobody is perfect—I most likely made a mistake in this very post. However, I am at least striving for the best possible image with my English. I ask for complete sentences, proper capitalization, and use of the spell ch—

I just realized Internet Explorer does not have a spell checker—one of the most basic features all of the other major browsers support (Firefox, Chrome, Opera, Safari). That fact is merely another reason to switch to Chrome, my favorite, or to Firefox. However, I won't get into that discussion for now. Just take my word for now and get one of those and install Ad Block Plus (an addon, or extension, which is available for both browsers which blocks most advertisements) on it and you'll be happy.

Now, where was I? Bad grammar means reader is not important... Nobody is perfect... Ask the readers for the English they learned in grade school... Hmm, that pretty much covers my current general grammar gripes. I'll part with two specific tips: commas before "if" and plural forms of proper nouns.

"If clauses" fall in the "subordinate clause" category. If the subordinate conjunction or relative pronoun comes after the main clause in your sentence, you do not use a comma. In the last sentence, the subordinate clause was before the main clause. In that sentence, "if" is the subordinate conjunction and "you do not use a comma" is the main clause, everything else is the subordinate clause. If I did not include the comma, you might wonder where the subordinate clause ends and the main clause begins. Perhaps not so much with this particular sentence, but I'm sure you get the drift. I can also rewrite the sentence like so:

You do not use a comma if the subordinate conjunction or relative pronoun comes after the main clause in your sentence.

There is no comma when it is switched around like that. The "if" is enough to signal to you the main clause has ended and the subordinate clause has begun. Adding a comma is simply unnecessary.

Naturally, it wouldn't be English if there wasn't an exception, and this is no exception. If the subordinate clause is part of a nonessential relative clause, use commas just like you would for any other nonessential phrase. Nonessential phrases give extra information, but are not required to complete the thought or clarify an ambiguity. I'll let you read up on that on your own. Here, I'll even Google it for you.

In a nutshell, do not use a comma when the word "if" is used in the middle of a sentence, but use it if it comes at the beginning of the sentence and for nonessential phrases.

Plural forms of proper nouns are much simpler. My Mom asked me about a comment someone posted on her Facebook Wall. The comment used "Gibbies" as the plural form of "Gibby," my family's last name, and Mom wanted to know if that style or form had any merit. Google to the rescue. Summarizing the results, when a proper noun, in this case "Gibby," is pluralized, simply add "s" to the end. Yes, this will create the slightly odd-looking "Gibbys," but it is better than respelling someone's family name. Of course, if the proper noun ends in any of the hard sounding letters (s, x, ch, sh, or z), add -es. Source (a little more than half way down), another, and one more for good measure.

You would use the plural form of a proper name when saying something like, "Mom! The Gibbys have finally arrived!" That is saying more than one Gibby has arrived. To show possession, add an apostrophe: "There is the Gibbys' van."

Good grammar makes everybody feel better, so just take the extra minute or two. Sure, it is somewhat hard in the beginning, but you will get better at it in time, just like anything else.