“If the text makes the point in a way that people can understand, what is the problem?”

I had to read this sentence twice as I had found it contradictory the first time through. It was confusing.

This amuses me as I was already agreeing with you that your grammar is never bad and was thinking to myself as I was reading that “as long as its clear, what does it matter?” when I stumbled on this sentence.

Still down with Grammar Nazis. They also Godwin a topic by default.

Grammar boils down to something very simple:

Proper usage of grammar indicates that someone has spent the time to appear intelligent to others.

It isn’t rocket science, as they say, to learn you own native language properly. Just because someone understands the general meaning behind slang and innuendos and just because people can gather from context the meaning of “their” “there” and “they’re” doesn’t mean you should neglect it.

The point being: proper grammar is what generally divides the educated from uneducated.

If you can’t take the 30 seconds it takes to make a sentence look intelligent, then that tells me something about your character.

I don’t expect people to write in proper English for texting on phones or when they’re bored and FEYUL LAIK RITING IN LOLCAT SPEEK. Nor do I expect people to remember where the heck to put a semicolon vs a comma…

…but for goodness sake learn how to SPELL.

You might not care, and your equally illiterate friends might not take notice, but OTHER people will move you down a notch on their ladder of respect.

Also grammar may not be a product of direct intelligence, but it sure as hell tells shows whether or not you give a sh*t. Poor grammar sends a powerful message that you don’t care enough to correct yourself or to maintain yourself in the eyes of other people.

It equates to getting up every day and not shaving or combing your hair. Sure, you get the same quality of work done at your job whether or not you fix your looks each morning, but you certainly won’t get the same respect or give off the same message as when you took care of yourself.

Get the point yet?

If the text makes the point in a way that people can understand, what is the problem?

I think the bar should be considerably higher than this, at least for anything I’m likely to bother trying to read. Things like capitalization and punctuation are used for a reason: they make writing easier (and quicker) to read, even when they aren’t needed to avoid ambiguity. Bad grammar can be distracting and confusing as well, even if it’s possible to figure out what was intended.

As for prescriptive grammar in schools, back when I was in school, I was annoyed on many occasions when my English teachers declared that things like split infinitives were disallowed, because I knew that people have long used those constructions and that sometimes using them can be the best way to convey one’s thoughts.

Now though, I realize that my English teachers were completely right to make rules like that. The fact is, the vast majority of the time a high school student breaks one of these rules (even the “rules” that I disagreed with) they’re engaging in bad writing. By demanding that students follow these rules, teachers can improve the writing of the vast majority of the students, while not adversely affecting the writing of few students who know better. I think this was even beneficial to me as well, as it made me pay more attention every time I used those constructions to whether there might be a better way to express the same thing.

Here’s a contrived example: whether or not the sentence “A preposition is a word you should never end a sentence with” is grammatically incorrect, the sentence “You should never end a sentence with a preposition” is a far better way to say the same thing.

English, used properly, does end sentences with prepositions [does that make them postpositions?].

I seem to recall that “postponed preposition” is the term. There are good linguistic reasons (which I don’t remember) not to call them postpositions.