I'm curious as to how you define "a sentence corrupted by poor grammar" when reading literature? In literature, there are numerous effective, even dynamic examples of what would be poor grammar academically -- I'm thinking especially of my lesson on the opening of Huxley's _Brave New World_, whose opening paragraph consists of two sentences with no verbs! Obviously, we can identify these as fragments, but as I wrote in my article, "Language Matters: Grammar as a tool in the teaching of literature," the grammar here foreshadows the major themes in the novel (_English Journal_. January, 2003: 102). I'm not sure that "poor grammar" is easy to discover in good literature (although I do have to admit that sometimes I find Hemingway annoys me because of his grammatical choices). Can you clarify your position?

 

Thanks,

 

Paul D.


 
"If this were play'd upon a stage now, I could condemn it as an improbable fiction" (_Twelfth Night_ 3.4.127-128).


From: Patricia Lafayllve <[log in to unmask]>
To: [log in to unmask]
Sent: Sunday, December 21, 2008 8:27:02 AM
Subject: Re: ATEG Digest - 18 Dec 2008 to 19 Dec 2008 (#2008-275)

Katharine wrote:

And to my ability to do my reading.  My joy in reading comes to a 
jarring stop when I hit a sentence corrupted by poor grammar.  I've 
quite more than one novel because the author can't control her 
possessive pronouns and/or apostrophes.

Katharine in N.California (currently doing her best to teach 
kindergarten children about nouns and verbs)


Agreed!  Unless it's "deliberately poor" grammar, as in the case of people
writing in dialects, bad grammar in a novel turns me off.  Run-on strings of
prepositional phrases make me personally nutty, too...

We digress, I think - but the point is that a solid grasp of grammar seems
to enhance one's reading and writing abilities.

-patty

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