Oh, for Pete’s sake. I meant that Bellow’s thoughts were expressed beautifully, in part because of good sentence structure and spelling. If his sentences instead included gross or frequent spelling errors, and the grammar made his thoughts hard to follow, he would not be Bellow.

Criminey.

True, anyone can make a peanut butter sandwich, and poorly spelled and ungrammatical sentences can convey a simple message.

But sometimes, I want to read a book with flair, and fun, and artistic sensibility. My God, some people can write. Sometimes it’s difficult to finish a few paragraphs by Saul Bellow, just because the writing is so beautiful.

I’ve often thought about what that indefinable quality is that makes Bellow so great. Now I know. He spells and punctuates correctly.

Good writing is like good cooking. Ingredients, placed in just the right combination, at just the right time, become something sublime. True, anyone can make a peanut butter sandwich, and poorly spelled and ungrammatical sentences can convey a simple message.

But sometimes, I want to read a book with flair, and fun, and artistic sensibility. My God, some people can write. Sometimes it’s difficult to finish a few paragraphs by Saul Bellow, just because the writing is so beautiful. To re-read those sentences, even aloud, is a joy.

But spelling versus grammar? It’s like trying to choose between wit and wisdom. I want both.

I might agree that punctuation is often malleable, but grammar as a whole is pretty critical to any but the simplest of communications.

Oh, and I think that people undervalue the etymological clues built into English’s famously non-orthogonal orthography. It may be easier to muddle through a poorly spelled sentence than a poorly constructed one, but the communication suffers.

Serial catowner—I defend sportscasters against all sorts of calumnies on the basis that it’s really hard to talk completely ad lib for a few hours straight without saying a few dumb things! But you can see certain things happening in sportscasterese that will soon be part of everyday speech: loss of the subjunctive mood, for one:
“If he catches that pass, they win the game” (when he missed the pass).

Tell that to the one, two, or three people confusingly doomed by the muddledness of:

This execution warrant is for Bob a pianist and a cellist.

This execution warrant is for Bob, a pianist and a cellist.

This execution warrant is for Bob, a pianist, and a cellist.

This execution warrant is for Bob—a pianist and a cellist.

Oh, and “execution” was a misspelling; we meant to say “execration.” Our regrets to the family or families of Bob a pianist and a cellist.

Examine what he says- it appears to be a lie, but the grammer is so bad that it can actually be the truth. His followers think he’s telling them the soothing lies they need to hear, but in a courtroom it would be hard to convict.

You can also see this in the briefs filed by corrupt lawyers. They appear to have stupid grammatical errors, but, strange to say, many of them form an escape hatch for the lawyer if the brief is ever closely examined.

Another interesting place to watch grammer in action is the play-by-play sports broadcaster. Too bad George missed his true calling.

On the other hand, sound empirical studies show that prescriptive rules of style, spelling and punctuation can make language both easier to write and easier to read, but often don’t. In most of the world, these facts are taken seriously even if they are widely ignored. Good solid studies show that it’s easier to read written Texts when all the Nouns are capitalised like in German, while I expect that the English rules concerning Capitalisation – that all Words derived from proper Nouns must have Capitals – actually make it harder. Generally, you can safely put a comma in English where there is a pause in speech without screwing up or looking like an idiot, in contrast to German, which uses too many commas to make sense.

But one should avoid vulgar Orwellism in thinking about language. Unclear language does not intrinsically imply unclear thought any more than allowing same-sex marriage denies people the ability to make distinctions between gay and straight relationships. (A misconception all too common to people and lawyers alike, particularly Maggie Gallagher over at the Volokhs.)

Mis-spelled words only really cause confusion when, by sheer chance, the sentence still makes sense with either of two possible meanings. Since most homophone pairs have no logical connection with each other this does not happen often. “I got board waiting to meat my frend” does not confuse.

Some punctuation error’s are similarly grating. but, not, confusing.

However many potential punctuation errors are more like the one quoted by “a” in comment #13, “We oppose everything, which turns workers from one country against those from another.” Thousands of possible sentences could be moulded by this malfunctioning template and still come out making sense, but not the sense the writer intended.

This boils down to a point similar to that made by “blah”.

Finally, I must disagree with Melissa Spore. Let’s keep pesky experts out of this. They would only spoil the fun.