Despite the fact that I love the part where he says he knows more than "a mere Corporal," I have mixed emotions about Mr. Gatward's Punctuation Crusade.
I am not much of a grammar maven. I was blessed (or possibly cursed) with a father who spoke well. I grew up speaking well. I never actually learned the rules, I just sound like I've learned them. This whole post could be full of egregious grammatical errors and I wouldn't even know. I am a total Grammar Fraud and live in constant terror of being found out.
Maybe this has made me a tad over-sensitive. While I was among the first to crack up when the barbecue restaurant had "Bowels of Chili" on its Specials board, I felt bad when a friend suggested we sneak over to a neighbor's house in the middle of night and add an "ly" to his "Please Drive Slow" sign. Or maybe I felt badly. Hell if I know. I just know he wants everybody to slow the heck down as they go around that corner so they don't run over his children.
In the end, the message is more important to me than anything else. Still, if we keep letting things slide, will we eventually end up in a place where the message is lost because we can't read it anymore?
