Is it just me, or bad grammar?

Sir, – I agree with Steve Finan (Oh My Word! September 5) that the English language is a fundamental tool used by all of us.

The building blocks of this tool should be taught as soon as a child starts to verbalise and should be built on throughout a person’s life.

However, he implies that school leavers should be able to explain how they construct written or spoken English.

I have long since forgotten how to parse a sentence and freely admit to ignorance of the nine parts of English as well as never having heard of a closed class of words until now.

These shortcomings do not prevent me from being able to communicate clearly and unambiguously in both written and spoken English.

I wonder whether Steve might use his time and influence better by pointing up and correcting some of the basic errors in English grammar. They are far worse than the inability to place commas correctly, in my view.

I cite an example: ‘My wife and I have been invited to a party’ is a grammatically correct sentence.

The sentence ‘John has invited my wife and I to a party’ contains a fundamental and increasingly common error. You don’t need to know your subjective and objective pronouns to know the ‘I’ in the second sentence should be ‘me’.

I have not conducted any research into this, but doubt the blame can be laid at the door of Curriculum for Excellence, as the error is just as common among people educated in other parts of the UK.

Perhaps the use of ‘me’ in a compound object such as ‘my wife and me’ is deemed somehow impolite or vulgar, while the wrong use of ‘and I’ is thought to be refined.

It may be that this aberration will become so widespread it will one day be as acceptable as Steve’s use of the split infinitive ‘to properly teach’. I hope not. Alexander Davis MCIL. 1 Arthurfield Green, Kingskettle, Fife.