the internet needs grammar.
Stanley Fish (who has a cool name) writes about many students’ inablity to write a coherent sentence even after they’ve graduated from college. (article in the NYTimes, click here for a bugmenot registration)
Instead of teaching students how sentences work and how words come together to form thoughts, teachers are giving them lessons on content, which in his opionion is useless without the means of forming said content into a clear thought that makes sense and is readable.
Fish teaches his students enough grammer that by the end of the semester they are able to create their own language, and do so as part of a semester long project.
I can’t imagine not knowing what “tense”, “manner” and “mood” are in terms of grammar. (Well, in truth I had forgotten the definition of mood and manner, but I still understand their concepts, similar to how I know grammar in Spanish but not the names of the parts. I couldn’t tell you what the past perfect whatever the crap form of a verb is.)
On the one hand I find it hard to believe that kids who are graduating from high school, and in turn from college 4 years later, don’t know these basic concepts of grammar. And yet, it explains a lot of why there are so many people with awful grammar around, especially on the internet, which brings out and gives voice to some of the dumbest people around.