Jenny Morse, PhD
Author and CEO

Recently I got into a little text message exchange with my aunt. She wrote to me about sitting next to someone on the plane who had terrible grammar. They were talking and the other person kept saying things like “Me and my friend” instead of “My friend and I.” Which made my aunt a bit crazy. She texted me because, since I’m an English person, she thought I would understand her frustration.

And I do understand. But I don’t think speech has the same grammar rules as writing. And I definitely don’t think it’s appropriate to correct a stranger’s grammar on an airplane.

Speaking functions completely differently than writing, as I’ve written about in another blog post. Grammar matters in language because word order is the way that we build and exchange meaning. A simple sentence becomes incomprehensible if the words aren’t in the correct order or don’t follow the understood grammar rules:

I need to go to the store.

The store go to to the I need.

Same sentence, different word order, and it no longer has any meaning.

BUT different groups of people develop their own rules that can be understood by others in the same group. For example, one group might express that simple sentence by saying

I needs to go to the store.

I be going to the store.

While these are considered non-standard versions of English, “standard” means used my most people (subtext: people in power/majority; sub-subtext: white people).

Want a more in-depth refresher on professional writing?

Try our Better Business Writing: On Demand course. This self-paced, virtual course will teach you strategies to become a more efficient and effective writer, and provide you with expert feedback

Learn More

But these deviations from the “standard” follow their own set of rules that can be traced as consistent among certain groups of people. These deviations are similar to how new languages develop over time. For example, Latin became Italian became Spanish became Portuguese because the language changed as it was used by different groups of people. We don’t say that people speaking Italian are just grammatically incorrect speakers of Latin!

Additionally, most people have the ability to change the rules they follow depending on who they are talking to and whether it is culturally useful to use the “standard” form or the “non-standard” form.

But people also learn a certain set of rules based on how their parents and other people we grew up around spoke. We can learn new rules, but we might have to concentrate a little harder to ensure we follow them.

Where I grew up, saying “Me and my friend” was thrown around all the time. I say that. It’s alliterative. But it isn’t “grammatically correct” according to the grammar textbook rules.

My argument, though, is that it doesn’t matter. “Me and my friend” is equally understandable in conversation as “My friend and I.” So no meaning is lost by this grammar error. Additionally, someone saying “My friend and I” might be seen as pompous, obnoxious, or difficult while someone saying “me and my friend” might seem friendly and easy-going.

Speech tends to be less formal than writing.

And that’s a whole other history of power. Writing hasn’t always been a tool that 86% of the population had access to. That’s the percentage of people who are literate today, in 2021. Global literacy rates before 1500 AD are estimated at below 20%. For centuries, writing has been a tool of the rich and powerful—people whose families could afford to send them for religious training or could purchase books, people who had time to go to school instead of work in fields, people who were allowed to learn to read based on cultural rules.

And writing has traditionally been more permanent than speech. Until relatively recently when we invented audio and video recordings, speech disappeared as soon as it was spoken. Alternatively, writing endured on pages in libraries that could be copied and sent all over the world. That durability of writing gives it more weight, more gravitas. People needed to be more careful about what they wrote down but didn’t need to be as careful with what they said.

At present, we still consider writing to have more “weight” than speech, and we treat it as a more formal method of communication. We expect most professional writing to be grammatically correct. And many of us wish that text messages and social media posts would also adhere to the tradition of grammar.

But the truth is that language has always changed. The slippage of language over time is absolutely natural. That’s why our modern English isn’t the same language as Shakespeare’s. We each contribute to the teeny changes that occur in our language every time we speak and write. Language changes slow enough that few of us lose access to our native language within our lifetimes (though this is experienced by people who have become the last living speaker of their language) but language also changes fast enough that we will be alive for some significant shifts in our language.

For example, modern American English rarely uses “whom” any more. Which sounds correct to you?

1. Who did you call?

2. Whom did you call?

Most native American English speakers would say that #1 “sounds” correct. And we would be right—it sounds like what we are used to hearing. But #2 is technically, grammatically correct.

If you said, “Who did you call?” and a stranger leaned over and said “whom,” how would you feel about that stranger? Grateful? Or annoyed?

The rules change over time. They change based on how people actually use a language.

At Appendance, we can tell you what the rules are, if you want to know. We can point them out to you in your writing samples, so that you can decide whether to use the “correct” versions or not. But the only rules that matter are the ones that affect language to the point where two people can’t understand each other.

We focus on effective communication, which changes depending on who(m…wink wink) you are talking to and in what context. For you to become an effective communicator, you need to learn which rules make the best impression in a particular situation—and that rarely means correcting a strangers’ grammar.

Featured