Young Writers Society

If you could take one grammatical rule from the book and burn it, which rule would it be?

I find that the better I get at grammar the more I seem to treasure it, however I'd be more than happy to abandon the use of question and exclamation marks only at the end of a sentence.

Or maybe there's a common abuse of grammar that you'd rather obliterate?

None. I'd rather burn the people who bring shame to grammar.

Can I burn text talk to the ground? I'm getting sick of people typing:

"r u k? lol, br y u noob?"


Burn it all!

I might consider burning the "no run-on sentences" rule. While refraining from using run-ons makes writing look clean and neat, sometimes I just want to cram as much as I can into a sentence. (There are some novels entirely composed of a single run-on sentence!)

DOWN WITH RUN-ONS. I love you Cole, but I can't appreciate run-on sentences

Personally, I'd burn the "thou shalt not overuse commas" rule. I love commas. Commas add to the voice of your work, and the flow and the way your characters say and think and GWAAHH COMMAS. they're a good thing and they deserve as much use as humanly possible.

Haha, I'd go the opposite way of Cole. I get really annoyed when Word tells me my sentence is a fragment. People don't always speak in complete sentences. Actually, I get annoyed at a lot of things Word does. Like when it tries to "fix" my subject verb agreement when it is just fine, thankyouverymuch.

I agree with @niteowl. People generally don't always speak in complete sentences, so having all those red or green "error" lines gets annoying.

Fragments definitely need to go.

I say it's a sentence, so it's a sentence. You robotic things shall not control me!

But I'd also like to burn the little red lines that pop up when I use the English (as in England) spelling for some words. (colour, honour, etc.)

I'm all for burning the fragments rule to the ground.

Fragmented sentences drive me crazy so I'm all for the run on sentences that go on for ages without having a comma in sight for the majority of it because they're so much fun to write no matter what the context is and maybe it's also because in my brain there is one continuous stream of thought that leads it to be one very long sentence that lasts for at least three days at a time so it feels more natural to do that.

Run-on sentences are great for dialogue and communication and I suppose that I have to take back my previous statement to some extent, but not entirely because in actual writing, like in the imagery and narration and stuff, unless your character's really super excited about something and the work's first person, I still vote that run-ons have to burn.

But like. I'm also kind of a major fan of fragments? Seriously they're just. Yes.

"They" & "Their" needs to be a gender neutral SINGULAR possessive pronoun. You know how you get tired to say "he or she" / "his or her"

so when a lot of people speak, they'll say: "When a student succeeds, they should thank their professor. " I mean, if you don't know the gender, or it's a generic statement, do you really wanna go the "assume the student is a 'he'" or the "When a student succeeds, one should thank one's professor" BLEGH.

NOBODY says "ONE" in that context. Only in writing do you see it, it's really grating for me x_x

The whole deal with its and it's...seriously, I think it can just be implied which one you mean based on context.

"Who or Whom?". I don't know why, it just really annoys me.

Audy-- Or, as an alternative, we could bring back the gender-neutral pronouns.