On Casual Language, Part 3: Unusual Grammar

Written By Jack Pickering

I ended a previous post with list of shibboleths which alert the reader that “unnecessary commentary” will soon ensue. The final point on the list was the following.

          • “You. Will. Never. Believe. This!!!…”

This speaks to another insidious form of casual writing: unusual grammar. Consider the following example, taken from a memoir.

“The only thing that can hurt you in life is FEAR. FEAR is the only thing that can get you killed. Often people won't do something because of FEAR. In work, romance, spiritual growth, religion, politics, FEAR is what will stop you from being successful. You can't let FEAR hold you back.”

For the reader, instead of achieving the desired effect, which is to drive home the immensely deleterious effect that fear can have on a person, the incorrect capitalization in the paragraph above suggests an untethered mind. As such, the reader would be less likely to take this—incidentally, rather good—advice.

Jack Pickering
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On the Use of Absolutes, Part 1: Regarding My Ungenerous Assumptions
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The Ethics of Nonfiction, Part 2: Creating “Novelistic Scenes”