Jody Azzouni

Jody's Notes

Do you worry about this? I'm always fighting the grammar and spell check mechanisms of the various word processing programs I work in--either because I'm wrenching grammar or spelling deliberately or because I simply disagree with the judgments the mechanisms make about language. Long sentences, I've noticed, they especially hate long sentences. Don't put too many clauses into your sentences or they'll get annoyed (they'll put red or green underwritings onto your text, or they'll simply and silently correct you).

This is what I'm worried about: that although I'm fighting the programming machinery on this (almost on a daily basis because, after all, I write on a daily basis), lots of people aren't fighting them at all. Lots of people, younger people especially, simply take them as right, as the gospel of grammar as it were. Soon (I fear), people will be emailing me, asking me how come my English is so bad. They'll wonder what country I'm from, and why I'm so badly educated.

I reprinted this poem in The Lust for Blueprints.