What are some of the grammar rules of English that you were taught in school that now seem a little odd?

Question

Also, what are some of the common standard rules of grammar that you see frequently violated in written forums and in somewhat formal spoken forums?

Answer 1

Truthfully, none of them seem odd to me. The fact that people are too ignorant to follow those grammar rules is what strikes me as a little odd. It is not that hard, makes you sound more intelligent, and clears up a lot of misunderstandings. I am amazed at how poorly some people communicate. Decent grammar helps.

Answer 2

All languages change all the time and of course many of us don´t think so much if the words or sentences are correct or not. It´s the same in all languages, we seem to have such a busy life, so we don´t have time to think enough of the grammar. TV, movies and so on make it worse. But through time of history every language has changed, and now we are living the Internet and computer age, so languages change really fast! (I´m sorry my native language is not English, but I try my best, must admit sometimes it´s hard to understand new words for example.) I liked your question though.

Answer 3

Several prescriptivist rules are not truly descriptive of English. Rather, they are derived from rules for Latin and shoehorned into English. Examples include the rule about splitting infinities and the rule about ending sentences with prepositions.

That is a rule up with which I refuse to put.

Answer 4

Never end a sentence with a preposition!

That is the only rule that even remotely seems annoying to me, because so many people do not follow this rule and it sounds "normal" now.

Example: "What are you doing that for?" should be like "For what purpose are you doing that?"

Answer 5

I was taught in 4th grade (~1996) that the plural of "person" was correctly "persons." I still don't like that word to this day. "People" is more correct, for me.