The English language is stupid. There are too many pointless rules. Take the sentence "My brother and I went to the store.", for example. Why does it have to be said exactly like that. At first I always want to say "Me and my brother went to the store." Then I remember that stupid rule about always saying the other person's name first(which, by the way, makes absolutely no sense).
Now I have to figure out if I'm supposed to say "My brother and me" or "My brother and I." So now I have to do that stupid thing where I drop the first part and say to myself "Me went to the store." Then I know that sounds wrong, so I know it must be "My brother an I". Except that I had to pause for a second to think about the sentence before I said it. Not only is this a waste of time, but I would argue that you look stupider pausing to think about what you're going to say then you do just saying it incorrectly. It probably would have been easier to just go with your instincts and say "Me and my brother". Why do we have this stupid rule. Can somebody tell me. It seems completely unnecessary to me.
You know what else isn't nearly as important as people make it out to be? Question marks. I didn't even bother to use any question marks in the last two paragraphs, and I doubt anyone even noticed. I'll stop typing for a minute while everyone goes back and checks that I didn't use question marks in the last two paragraphs. See? Anyway, everyone always talks about how exclamation points are annoying and useless, but exclamation points are a hundred times more useful than question marks. Saying "I'm going to the store." is very different from saying "I'm going to the store!" In the latter you know that I'm excited about going to the store, but in the former all you know is that I'm going to the store. You have no idea how I feel about it.
Now if I say "Does anyone need anything from the store." it doesn't matter that I didn't use a question mark. You know why? Because that sentence couldn't possibly be mistaken for anything other than a question. The whole idea of question marks is to let people know that your sentence is a question. If they already know, then I don't see the problem. You don't have to tell them it's a question twice. That would be like having two Subways in White County(like we're going to next week for some reason. I think it's because of how smart we are).
Sometimes you need a question mark, like in the last paragraph when I said "You know why?". "You know why" on it's own is a statement, so you need the question mark to make it a question. But if someone writes "What's your favorite color." and you can't tell that it's a question, then you're the one who's dumb. The only rule when it comes to communication is that you make sure that the person you're talking to interpenetrates your message the way you intended them to. As long as you can do that, then mission accomplished. Leave all the pointless grammar rules to the people who are too dumb to realize that language constantly evolves and half the things we say today would have been considered "improper grammar" 100 years ago.
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GOOO PUNCH! GOOOO PUNCH! GOOOO PUNCH!
I really don't want people interpenetrating my writing -- too much clean up and my self-esteem takes a dive. :P
On topic, I think that when you talk about verbal communication, focusing on grammar too much gets in the way of smooth communication, like you said.
But when you talk about written communication, there usually isn't the opportunity to make sure that your audience received the message you intended them to. In these cases it makes more sense to adhere to proper grammar and form.
That being said, too much grammar nazism is just obnoxious.
that's one rude panda.
I'm not sure if you've noticed, but the question mark is right beside the fullstop, and requires only a touch of the shift key when using it. It isn't really that hard.
Also, who's down with Strunk and White?