An endless dispute continues concerning proper grammar usage. Guide to Grammar seeks to put an end to this dispute. But with people like Wikipedia claiming that they know the answers, the dispute lives on. I hope whoever penned the grammar Wikipedia page used correct grammar.
But the encyclopedic nature of both Guide to Grammar and Wikipedia have proven to be too dense for the average reader. Wait, who is that on the horizon? It's Grammar Girl! She has come to save us from the boring world of grammar with a quirky and fun approach to a typically boring topic! Is she a dork? Or is she ironically cool? Nobody knows!
Look out, Grammar Girl! Grammar Gorillas is declaring (guerrilla?) war on your fun and quirky approach by making grammar even more exciting! Guess the correct answer to grammar questions and you win bananas! That is bananas! B-A-N-A-N-A-S, bananas!
The war on boring grammar comes to a critical mass when Grammar Bytes enters the fray. Not just fun and quirky, Grammar Bytes is grammar instruction with attitude. Possibly to appeal to the reality TV generation, where sassy attitude is king. The poor people who just wanted to learn grammar are being bombarded by these so-called "fun" grammar instruction sites.
All the while, amid the boring grammar war, the Purdue OWL holds strong in its appeal to the grammar nerds who don't mind being called grammar nerds. They don't need to be entertained by games and fun. They are satisfied with the mundane, academic approach.
Grammar from About.com seeks to dethrone the Purdue OWL as king of the grammar sites for the indoor kids, but it's SEO ranking isn't very encouraging. Perhaps they would benefit from some more targeted keywords and incoming links.
But what about grammar instruction for the in-between crowd? You know, those who fall asleep when reading the Purdue OWL, but don't necessarily want to be overstimulated by the flashing excitement of grammar fun? (Maybe they have epilepsy...?) No fear, Grammar Monster is here! A fresh approach to grammar without being gimmicky is their appeal.
In conclusion, I ask: what is grammar, anyway? Dictionary.com says it is the study of the way the sentences of a language are constructed; morphology and syntax.
BORING!
Bring back Grammar Girl!
(The rest of the post is my commentary)
So, this was obviously a bit weird. But think about what I had to work with! When you google "grammar", you aren't going to find a lot of fan sites, or reviews, or stores selling grammar. All I got for results were different grammar instruction sites. The best thing I could think of is how different styles of grammar sites could be appealing to different people, and how one side is competing to be more academic, while the other side is competing to be more fun and quirky.
I admit, my choice of topic probably didn't facilitate a great blog post for this particular prompt, but I think I did OK with what I had!
Saturday, September 29, 2012
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3 comments:
Haha I loved reading this! I know you thought it was weird, but try reading it from a first-time reader perspective! It was actually quite clever. I love that you turned it into this brilliant narrative about our beloved Grammar Girl. Like most other posts, where the topic brings up a series of different types of content for the subject, it pretty much gives you a pre-made narrative. However with grammar you probably got mostly grammar teaching sites, so I love that you took those basic instruction sites and just turned them into something fun make a quirky story line out of it all. I'm impressed, well done my friend, well done!
I really liked the way you framed your narrative; you definitely did well with what you had. I love the way we all kinda came up with something so different from the same prompt.
Dave,
Yeah, that's about all I could do with what I had. The rest of you guys seemed to have a nice variety of fan sites, info sites, retailers, etc. But I was just left with site after site of grammar instruction. It makes sense, really. I mean, who is really a "fan" of grammar? And what can you buy that is grammar related besides grammar instruction?
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