Reply To: To grammar or not to grammar…

I’m teaching someone how to write–someone whose entire knowledge of the English language and its usage comes from an elementary school and GED education, both of which focus heavily on grammar but not enough on theory. So I gave him a book by Stanley fish on writing and he came over to me every minute or so, pointing out various “grammatical errors” like a seemingly misplaced comma, or an ‘and’ at the beginning of a sentence, and I eventually had to explain all this to him and tell him to chuck everything that his prior education had taught him regarding the English language.