Grammar Police?

There seems to be a renaissance of language pedantry with the advance of technology and social networking. Not only does Google try to correct people's grammar by asking them what they mean, Facebook groups such as “I judge you when you use poor grammar”, are quite popular. English teachers, especially teachers of writing, are expected to behave as language police. If students make grammar errors in other courses or later, in their careers, their English teachers are often blamed. No one likes to be viewed as a scary police officer though, just as students resent being viewed as criminals for violating grammar rules. In fact, a recent study concluded that "People Obsessed With Grammar Aren't as Nice as Everybody Else". While language attitudes have been correlated with personality traits before, this study interestingly focused on attitudes towards typing errors and grammar variation through confused homonyms (words that sound the same but that should be spelled differently). Details of the study were published in the article “If You’re House Is Still Available, Send Me an Email: Personality Influences Reactions to Written Errors in Email Messages”.

Split verbs are known to be particularly irritating to language purists, yet Steven Pinker defends them as follows:

Any speaker who has not been brainwashed by the split-verb myth can sense that these corrections go against the rhythm and logic of English phrasing. The myth originated centuries ago in a thick-witted analogy to Latin, in which it is impossible to split an infinitive because it consists of a single word, like dicere, 'to say'. But in English, infinitives like 'to go' and future-tense forms like 'will go' are two words, not one, and there is not the slightest reason to interdict adverbs from the position between them.

Let us not be thick-witted and mean when it comes to grammar! Besides, effective communication is not merely about grammar: it is about content, logic, general clarity of expression, relevance, and overall fluency. If grammar is also “polished”, all the better; if not, it is not such a disaster – or is it?