To Keep or To Toss? That is the Question
Should You Keep or Toss the Rules You Learned in School?
Artificial Intelligence (AI) is a useful tool for many things, including writing to some extent. Nothing can replace the creativity and individual thought of the human brain, so authors and other creatives will never fully lose their importance. Also, language is fluid and ever-changing. The Oxford English Dictionary, Merriam-Webster, and other monitors of the fluidity of the English language record those changes. AI will learn, eventually, but most likely will never be able to completely keep pace.
For non-native speakers and even young native speakers still learning the many quirks of the language, it can be confusing and unnatural. For example: read, read, lead, and lead are four different words. Additionally, ‘lead’ and ‘led’ are also pronounced the same.
There are many things your English teacher taught you that fiction writers often ignore, or manipulate to their needs. When I first created the short story that has become my upcoming novel, my son walked up behind me at my desk. He read what I was writing and immediately said “you can’t start a sentence with ‘because’!”
Actually, I can if I want. If he read the whole paragraph, he could have seen the flow of the words and understood how ‘because’ could actually be the first word of a sentence. Another way to ‘violate’ the rules of English is within the quotation marks. People don’t always speak with proper grammar or sentence structure. Dialogue is an important means of communication and people don’t always speak in complete sentences or with subject-verb agreement, especially in a casual setting with friends or family. A popular example is ‘can’ vs. ‘may’ when asking permission. “Mrs. Smith, can I go to the bathroom?” Of course you can if you have the physical capability. “May I?” is the correct way to ask permission. But it’s universally known that when someone asks “can I (do something)?” they are asking permission.
Do authors break all the rules all the time? No. There are some rules that just can’t be broken, else the desired message can get lost. Most of the time, rule breaking isn’t even really called for. Authors are trying to convey a message, a story, and the ‘rules’ of the English language, which every speaker knows consciously and subconsciously, is an agreed upon way to convey those messages. Even authors who invent their own language for their fantasy worlds have to give that language a basic framework/set of rules that govern how the language is used by those who use it.
Some languages even have cultural differences within them. The English spoken/written in England is different from that of the U.S. (for example, the letter ‘U’ – present in many UK English words like “colour” and “favourite” but dropped from the U.S. versions); Australians also speak English, with their own twists. If you’re in the U.S. or England, you’ll be bar-be-quing shrimp, not ‘throwing shrimp on the barbie’.
What’s your favorite language ‘rule’ to break? Is there a ‘rule’ you would get rid of? Is there a rule you wish more people followed? Let’s talk on Facebook!
