It’s NaBloPoMo Day 3!
Today’s confession: I’m the Grammar Snob about whom your mother warned, and even I sing the “I before E” song in my head.
It’s true. As a perfectionist, I love rules. I love knowing what they are. As a Casual Perfectionist, I reserve the right to follow the ones I can justify or deem necessary. Some of the rules I gladly follow are those of grammar.
Grammar makes me giddy. I was taught the rules, and they stuck. I break some of the rules on my blog, on purpose, to make my writing more conversational. But, that’s just how I am. (See? It’s not proper to start a sentence with a conjunction, but I did it anyway.) Every once in a while, I end a sentence in a preposition. It makes me feel naughty.
I was taught the rules early on, and my mother enforced them. Even at an early age, I could diagram a sentence with the best of them. It was like a puzzle, and I love puzzles. Also, I think a lot of my grammar knowledge is based on the fact that I studied a foreign language in high school and majored in it in college. When you learn the rules inside-out in another language, the rules of your own language are solidified.
Even though I know the rules, I have little tricks I use to remember them. I mean, I’m the Grammar Snob about whom your mother warned, and even I sing the “I before E” song in my head. I do. “I before E, except after C, or sounding as ay as in neighbor or weigh.”
In my head, I almost always throw the word “parking” into a sentence when I use the words “a lot.” Yes, “a lot” is TWO words. Always. A parking lot. I love this a lot. I love this as much as a parking lot is large, and that’s a lot.
Most of the other rules are just part of my psyche. They’re woven into the fiber of my being, and that is what it is. Punctuation always goes inside the quotation marks. Always. They’re, Their, There? Easy. It’s, Its? Bring it on.
I would master every single Facebook Quiz on this topic if those weren’t just a ploy to get all my personal information and sell it to third party vendors.
The flip-side of knowing the rules when it comes to all things grammatical is the headache and twitch I get when I see incorrect grammar.
I’m the one on the highway screaming, “Drive safeLY! SAFELY! LEEEEE! Where’s the LEEEE!?” at the blinking road construction signs. Yes, those signs are so distracting to me, which kind of defeats their purpose.
I’m the one who has a nervous breakdown over the thought of making a mistake, especially on something that will be printed. I obsess over our Holiday Letter and then vow to never look at it again once it’s been mailed for fear of catching that one elusive typo. (It’s hard enough on the blog, when I can go in and correct it without anyone being the wiser.)
My husband can let something critical like that go, and often times without even noticing it existed in the first place. (He doesn’t even consider this to be a critical issue! The nerve!) 
He assures me that no one else cares as much as I do. That may be true, but doesn’t make me stop.
I care. I can’t not care. It’s who I am. I care a whole lot. I care a whole parking lot’s worth. And, that’s a lot.
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