Perhaps the rules of English as she is spoke don’t matter

So, I am, like, totally bored of the fact that language is so different to how it was. But I think to, actually, harass people when they don’t talk, like, proper, isn’t going to, seriously, make any difference – ’cos they think they didn’t do nothing wrong.

I shuddered as I wrote that paragraph. Wash my mouth out, Mrs C!

Mrs Culver was my English teacher. Substantially built, she travelled down the school corridors like an unset jelly. Never strict and certainly not scary, she beamed into our classroom, perpetually, it seemed, on the edge of a fit of giggles. Those of us in 5C at Tiffin Girls’ School loved her and emerged with her grammar rules stamped into us, like a brand. Even now, 50 years later, we still meticulously punctuate our texts and any grammatical error – in conversation or on email – is acknowledged with a nod and an apology heavenwards.

But Mrs C would be appalled to hear that standards have slipped. We are being encouraged to, recklessly, split infinitives and even start sentences with “like” and “so”. Analysis of 11.5 million words of British conversation has found that conventions which prohibit such practices are so widely flouted, they have effectively become part of modern spoken English – and so teachers need to stop stressing about teaching correct form. What is the grammar world coming to? (Sorry, Mrs C. “Never end a sentence with a preposition.”)

The reality is, you never forget what a good teacher has taught. Thanks to Mrs C, I always pack a wet wipe, to erase stray apostrophes (my local pub’s blackboard is stubbornly guilty of announcing PIZZA’S).

It is Mrs Culver’s fault that I’m always shouting at the television. “It’s not different to, it’s different from and similar to!” And I never mis-pronounce harassment – the emphasis should always go on the first syllable.

Admittedly – although it feels heretical – I sometimes flout her rules. It is conversationally clumsy, after all, to decree that: “Everyone must bring his, or her, own packed lunch.”

But then, language does change. We no longer say “prithee” or “thou”.

Perhaps grammar rules are made to be not so much broken as adapted. Or maybe there never were any rules in the first place – just the pedantry of a long line of Mrs Culvers, whose pronouncements we take as immutable.

Back in 1926, H W Fowler’s Dictionary of Modern English Usage, announced that: “The English-speaking world may be divided into (1) those who neither know nor care what a split infinitive is; (2) those who do not know, but care very much; (3) those who know and condemn; (4) those who know and approve; and (5) those who know and distinguish. Those who neither know nor care are the vast majority, and are a happy folk, to be envied by most of the minority classes.”

The Irish blogger Stan Carey, meanwhile, describes grammar pedantry as zombie rule: “What should have been dead and put to eternal rest has proved impossible to kill. It shuffles obnoxiously on in the popular imagination, independent of reason and evidence. Its survival, however tenuous, testifies to the power of classroom folklore over common sense and established usage.”

But classroom folklore can be a powerful force. And clearly Mr Carey never met Mrs Culver.