To the Grammar Elitist of the World.

Dear Grammar Elitists (GEs)

First of all, I want to say; "Get over yourselves."

Seriously no one likes your pretentious holier-than-thou attitude of going around and correcting/editing everyone else's syntax, spelling and/or usage. Have you never heard of poetic license, author's voice, and a whole bunch of other fancy (read as crappy) styles and formats we were forced to learn and use when we wrote and we needed to stay within the contraints. Little Brown Book, MLA, blah, blah, blah.....

If the powers that be wanted to have a set of parameters, rules, theorems, and laws pertaining to the english (not capitalized on purpose) language, then they should have made it a Science. And all english majors would get a Bachelor of Science instead of a Bachelor of Art degree in the academia world. Webster and Johnson should developed laws like Newton and physically gone out and proved there existence.

They didn't, so it is an art, and hence you have the freedom to express yourself anyway you want. To deviate from the norm as you like, to stray from the path, to stretch the boundaries, to use the imagination, to express your view point as you see fit. Did we tell Picasso where to place a nose, Pollack not to use a tricycle to paint, Mozart which chord comes next, DeMille how to do a close up, or Sol LeWitt which shapes to sculpt? NO WE DIDN'T! We just enjoy.

(I know, there are some that will debate this and say that music has rules, a canvas has limitations, and the lens has boundaries, but you would be stifling their creativity. We wouldn't have new genres of music, new mediums in art, and special effects in film, if people stuck to the "rules".)

So is it 'who do you love', 'whom the bell tolls', i before e except after c, no dangling modifiers, and that the plural of box is boxes, yet the plural of ox is oxen and not oxes.

Here is something to think about:
"He told him he was allowed to go?" Grammatically incorrect. Tell me where the "that" goes.

And why are we bound to homonyms like to, too, and two, or homographs like box and box? We cold not come up with something better or varied?

I know this is just the tip of the iceberg, at least for me it is.

Sincerely,

The Rest of Us.