Grammatically Correct Writing vs. Cultural Norms

I think we all had that one teacher in middle school, who would grade us down on grammar or spelling when any fool could tell it was an intentional variation we choose to prove a point, add color, or accomplish some other goal in writing.

As a professional writer I cal tell you two things about when that happened to you, even though I wasn’t anywhere near the situation.

Number One: your sentence was fine the way it was, so long as the point in contention was done on purpose and the sentence communicated your intent clearly.

Number Two: you failed to account for your audience and genre.

When addressing the question of whether to write with perfect grammar, or more colloquially, those two points are pretty much everything you need to consider. Of course it’s more complex than that, but we’ll come back to those two points again and again as we consider:

Why Grammar Matters
When Grammar Matters Less
The Six Biggest Pitfalls of Writing Culturally
What to Do When You’re In Doubt

Despite the simple ground rules, it’s complex topic with a couple of serious hazards. Let’s get started.

Why Grammar Matters

Precision

The most important reason grammar is important is that it helps make writing clearer. Language is a specific pattern of sounds or letters a culture has agreed mean the same thing. If you deviate from the expected pattern, your reader has to take extra steps/do more work to understand what you’re trying to communicate. Sometimes it’s worth it. Sometimes.

Presentation

This isn’t great when you look into the history of grammar, to whom it was taught, and some parts of how it developed, but people assume those with strong grammar are smarter/better educated/simply better than those with weak formal grammar. In some genres, this is less important. In others, it’s vital. For most nonfiction, anything but proper Chicago or MLA grammar and style can be lethal.

Think of grammar as your work uniform. If your job is to tell a fun yarn at a bar, then nobody cares if you show up in a ripped t-shirt and oil-stained jeans. For some folks it will make you look better. The same outfit if you’re a lawyer in court is a problem.

Expectations

This entry lies in many ways at the cross-section of the two above. Readers have expectations when they sit to read a book, and those expectations include some about how formal and accurate the writer’s grammar will be. If you break those expectations, the best outcome is they spend extra energy adjusting their expectations to the reality on your pages. The worst is they simply close the cover because they were expecting something different.

When Grammar Matters Less

Flow and Color

Like any other rule in life, you can break the rules of grammar if doing so helps your writing flow better, or makes your scenes appear more vivid and engaging on the page.

However…

Don’t kid yourself. Ninety percent of the time, what a writer thinks does that just lands like lazy writing. Do this sparingly, and only when you’re certain (and have agreement from at least one person who will tell you the truth) there is no way to achieve the same result by following grammar rules.

Speech and Dialogue

Here’s the thing. We don’t speak with perfect grammar. Even if you take out all the ums, errrrs, and you knows, have you ever greeted a friend with the following exchange?”

“Hello. How are you?”

“I’m fine, thank you. How are you?”

“Very well. How are your partner and children?”

No. You haven’t. Unless you were intentionally horsing around. Instead it was more like this:

“Hey. You good?”

“Yeah. You?”

“Good. How’s the fam?”

When writing dialogue, even before you get involved with matters of dialect, writing with perfect grammar makes for stilted prose. Instead, write as close to natural speech as you can while keeping your meaning and intention clear.

Precise Attribution

If you are writing nonfiction, whether that’s biography/autobiography, memoir, or journalism, it’s important to be accurate and truthful when you report what somebody else has said or written. If they said something using improper or alternative grammar, then it’s your responsibility to either report it exactly, or to make a note that you are correcting for grammar.

In academic and journalistic writing, it’s common to write “(sic)”, which is a shorthand meaning “look, that mistake wasn’t me. It was the person I quoted.” It’s not vital these days because most writers can figure it out from context.

Intentional Statement

When I was in college, it was popular in the feminist community to spell the word for an adult girl “womyn”, so as not to contain the word “man”. I’m not here to debate the politics of that, but it’s a perfect example of what I mean here.

If you want to make a point by intentionally breaking a rule of grammar or spelling, that’s 100% okay. Just make sure that (a) you’re consistent, (b) the reader can tell it’s on purpose, and (c) your writing is still understandable. Also make sure your audience will be receptive to this kind of thing.

Genres

Every genre has its expectations about what the sentences will look like on the page. Some, most notably hardboiled and gonzo crime fiction, practically demand some variations from standard grammar. Others, like regency romances and scientific writing, are technically accurate but also complex or flowery to the point they almost seem like they’re not.

The only way to get a sense for this is to read a lot in the genre you intend to write. If you just give a cursory look and try to imitate the style, you’ll do it wrong. It only works if you read enough to develop an unconscious, innate feel for what’s right and what’s not.

The Five Biggest Pitfalls of Writing Culturally

1. Too Much of a Good Thing

For the most part, you can make your point by writing culturally with just a handful of landmark instances early on, then less and less as your work progresses. If a character has an accent or speech impediment, you can write the sounds out on the page for the first appearance or two, and accurately trust the reader to fill it in for the rest of the book

Remember: if it’s hard to understand, some readers won’t bother trying.

2. Insensitivity

Speaking of that character with a speech impediment, there’s a very (very!) fine line between writing something to respectfully indicate a character speaks in a certain way and accidentally mocking real people with similar characteristics. What’s worse is, few people without those characteristics can spot that line.

If you’re writing in cultural grammar outside your own experience, always check in with a sensitivity reader. It’s just polite.

3. Inconsistency

I said earlier that you don’t have to make the same deviation from “proper” grammar at every opportunity. Too much consistency here is not a good thing. However, you should never deviate from standard in different ways for the same rule. Even if you do it on purpose and for good reasons, it’s going to come off sloppy ninety nine times out of ninety eight.

4. When You’re Outvoted

Sometimes you really want to break the grammar rules in a particular way, but the world has moved past it and you do so at your peril. For example, plenty of people use “irregardless” when they mean “regardless”. It’s even in the dictionary these days. But if you write for any sort of literary or word-loving folks, using “irregardless” will annoy them. It doesn’t matter if you like it, you’re outvoted. If you use it at all, it had better be coming out of the mouth of a character you want your readers to intensely dislike.

5. Dating Your Writing

If you use slang or other odd constructions in your writing, be aware that this sort of cultural writing evolves and changes faster than normalized writing. That means your writing will become dated and out of mode sooner than if you hadn’t written culturally.

This is especially important if you write middle grade or young adult. Those readers are already primed to dislike adults who try using their slang. They feel talked down to. If you do that and your slang is two graduating classes out of popularity, you are out of luck.

What to Do When You’re In Doubt

As a general rule, writers should default to grammatical writing. That’s what people expect when they pick up a book, and what you should deliver unless you’re doing something else on purpose. It’s sort of like using the word “said” in dialog tags.

The word “said” is what readers expect, and it’s largely invisible. The eye passes over it while the brain acknowledges who spoke in that line of text. When you write with correct grammar, the reader’s eye passes over the words and internalizes the thoughts, scenes, and plot you’re imparting to them via those words.

When you break from that norm, your words become visible and noticed. It breaks immersion…so you’d better have a great reason for that. But if you do, the result can be amazing.

Final Thought: A Little Light Reading

As with most other writing questions, we can often find the answers in books that were written well. If you’re looking for suggestions, consider some of the following:

Each of these strike an excellent balance between clear prose and use of dialect, slang, and cultural sentence structure (in some cases cultures the author made up from whole cloth). They’re worth checking out and using for inspiration and guidance.

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