I'm A Grammar School Dropout!

Hello. My name is Ann, and I’m a Grammar School Dropout!

For those of you in the elitist Grammar Police Brigade this isn’t news. You’ve had your eyes on me for a while with my misplaced commas, fragmented sentences, and out of whack homophones. I’ve got a stack of red inked submissions to prove it. Like Hester Prynne, I wear a scarlet letter (only mine is a big fat red G for grammar.)

Yes, I’m an offender in the worst possible way, but I’m on the fast track to changing my evil ways! I’m turning over a new leaf, paying my debt to society, handing in my spell checker, and ***gulps*** taking an English Grammar class.

My high school Lit and Grammar teacher was a year away from retirement with enough sick days saved up to take most of MY sophomore year off. (Yes I used year twice in one sentence. Do you really expect me to be fully reformed on day one?) I blame her for most of my offences. Here’s where I also add my shameless plug for good teachers. IF YOU’RE NOT WILLING TO PUT IN THE TIME, DON’T TEACH! That’s for you Trailer Taylor! You know who you are.

I also blame television for my bad spelling and grammar. They, being people much smarter than me, always say T.V. rots your brain and kills your attention span. They are right. I can’t sit still for the time it takes to pee, much less to proof sixty thousand words. So, Mark Burnett, I’m thinking of suing you. How dare you create reality television so riveting I chose to fry my brain instead of diagramming sentences?

Mostly I blame the college professor who gave me my first A on a research paper. I still remember her smiling at me when I looked at her, shock written across my face. She said the paper was right on target, but if she had graded the grammar I’d have gotten an F. She should have given me the F. Now I think as long as the content is good people will overlook the mistakes. Yeah right!

Alright, alright. Really I blame myself.

So here I go, off to grammar school, again. This time I’m taking you all with me. Yeah, you in the back corner, I can see you even with the hood over your head and the iPod plugged in your ears. Didn’t your Mama ever tell you those things will make you deaf? Even the guy in the back is coming along. If I have to endure the pain of being rehabilitated, you do too!

Class begins here on my blog as soon as I can muster up rewriting my lessons (and for once, proofing them). Stay tuned. There will be tears! There will be dangling participles! There will be manuscripts edited correctly! In the end, Ann will be rehabilitated into a Grammar Guru!