Happy National Grammar Day

I'm sure that everyone is excited about the big day, maybe even a little intimidated. After all, what could be worse than making a huge grammatical error on National Grammar Day 2010?

Booking Through Thursday marks the occassion this way:

In honor of National Grammar Day … it IS “March Fourth” after all … do you have any grammar books? Punctuation? Writing guidelines? Style books?

More importantly, have you read them?

How do you feel about grammar in general? Important? Vital? Unnecessary? Fussy?

I actually do have a grammar book on my desk and, despite what my writing looks like, I actually flip through the book sometimes when I am unsure about the proper way to phrase a thought. My problem is that the book is so comprehensive (it's 354 pages long) that I can't always find the answer to my question. More than once, I have come away from the book more confused than when I started flipping its pages.

But I blame myself, not the book, when I fail to successfully negotiate its finer points because that usually just means I've run short of time or patience, maybe both. Believe it or not, I actually do find English grammar to be an interesting subject, a quirk on my part that must go back to all the grammar drills (and sentence diagramming) the nuns at St. Charles put me through during my seven years of Catholic school. Thank you, Sister Patrick Marie.

The book I use is The Writer's Digest Grammar Desk Reference by Gary Lutz and Diane Stevenson. If you ever feel the need to pick up a good book on English grammar, you won't go wrong with this one.

(No fair pointing out the grammatical mistakes in this post but, if you feel the need to do so, it's me, not the book.)