Grammar Rocks!

Here is a real post that I saw on Facebook the other day:

“After listening to two people talk on the bus. I ask my self when did the education system in this country stop teaching grammar. Is english a lost language.”

Just a few, quick suggestions:

#1: “After listening to two people talk on the bus.” This is a fragment sentence. It does not express a complete thought. Use a comma instead and link it to the completion of the thought in the next sentence.

#2: “my self”: the correct word is "myself."

#3: Internal dialogue: You should use either quotation marks or italics for internal dialogue. Since Facebook does not take italics, quotation marks it is.

#4 and #5: Questions should be concluded with a question mark.

#6: English: It needs to be capitalized.

In other words, the post should have been written as follows:

“After listening to two people talk on the bus, I ask (I would say ‘asked’) myself, 'When did the education system in this country stop teaching grammar? Is English a lost language?'”

The person who posted this is a very nice human being. But somewhere in heaven, a thousand fourth-grade teachers are weeping.

That's it. I have been robbed of my will to write.