A jury of editors and linguists judged the most glaring pop culture grammar glitches. Instead of accusing the mistakes, they condemned the rules, turning the pop culture from something to laugh at into something to learn from.
Before pointing out these grammar goofs, it’s better to try to understand the point of grammar in the first place.
“Grammar and punctuation serve as a guide to readers as they make their way through a sentence, in the same way, that street signs and traffic lights guide drivers on the road,” Sarah Chassé, the Reader’s Digest copy chief says.
“For people to communicate clearly and effectively, they need a common set of rules,” Chassé adds that following accepted rules can also signal quality.
“If a news article is full of grammatical errors, readers will wonder if there are factual mistakes too.”
But not everyone honors these rules of the road. “I don’t know of any medium that doesn’t use grammar incorrectly,” says Michael Adams, PhD, professor of English and linguistics at Indiana University. “It’s not hard to find incorrect grammar on a daily basis.”
