I didn't make the rules, I just follow them

In Mrs. Crosier's 6th and 8th grade English classes, we had to diagram a sentence every night. Now, to be honest, I thought this was the stupidest thing I'd ever heard. Grammar was not something I thought I needed to know and it surely wasn't something I waned to know. As far as I could tell I was fine with some subject verb agreement. Other than that, it was never going to impact my life or my career.

Fast forward to college and I, the one who didn't care about grammar, majored in journalism. I had to pass a spelling and grammar test just to get my piece of paper indicating my high degree of knowledge. And, it was hard. At this point in my life I knew and respected the benefits of effective communication, but it wasn't that big of a deal. But let me tell you. It is now a very big deal. As in, I talk about it with Allison about 2 hours of each day. I don't always get the rules right (in fact, I can't remember some of them), but seriously people, can we please use try to follow the rules of the English language? Even if we didn't write the rules, we can surely follow, right?

Offenses I cannot tolerate.

1) I know it's a digital era. I too say "u" for "you" in the occasional text. But in an email, that you are typing from computer SPELL OUT WORDS! I don't want an email from you that says, "U r 2 gud @ bng l8." When what you want to say is "You are too good at being late." When you email with that nonsense you look stupid. Or 13. Use letters. Use words. It's okay, really.

2) An ellipsis is fun, sure. Who doesn't love a ... However, a ellipsis is not a period. I don't really know when you should use this thing and when you shouldn't, but what I know is that it does not believe at the end of a sentence to serve as the indication of "my thought is now finished." And, moreover, do not use this punctuation symbol for the end of every sentence. My name is Ann...I live in Raleigh...I work in marketing...I have two cats... I can't begin to say how annoying that is and how incorrect. I mean, do you realize you just spent more time to put a lot of extra periods in when you could have stopped with one and actually been correct? Knock it off people.

3) Capitalization. You can't just make a letter capital because you want to. I have Cats. Nope. I don't. I have cats. Why a capital C? If it's not a name or being used as a title probably just don't cap it. Lowercase letters need love too. However, I must say that if it should be capital, make it so.

4) Oh the comma. Again, I don't really know the rules, but I know that we don't need them every other word. It's not like, "Hmmm, I'm not sure if we need a comma here so I better put one in for good measure." No, just go look it up. Or, ask someone who know. And, if you don't know, you can probably leave it out and nothing will be hurt. Too many commas makes it hard to read, is wrong and again, makes you look stupid. Remove your right hand middle finger and type away from the comma.

5) A little trickier, but match your subject with your verb. When you have a subject followed by a prepositional phrase it can be tricky I know, especially if the subject is singular and the object of the preposition is plural. You get all confused you don't know what to do. Here's what you do. Do what Mrs. Crosier taught you and find your sentence subject and match your verb to it!

6) Plurals need an s. 5th and 6th periodS. We are talking about two periods, both the 5th and 6th ones. SisterS in law. We are talking two sisters, not two laws.

I don't know many of the rules, but at least I know enough to ask Allison when I'm not sure. It's a sore subject can you tell? Grammar and punctuation rules can be your friend. The aren't here to harm you. Invite them in your life, let them stay a while and soon they be like tarot cards telling you exactly what to do and when. Whew, I feel better.

One last thing. Thank you Mrs. Crosier, who is never going to see this. Diagramming a sentence is fun and very necessary. Thank you for making me do it for two years, every night. As a random side note, prepositional phrases were always my favorite. And, to be honest, they really still are.