"Rules" and When to Break Them

At some point in your education—elementary school, junior high, high school, perhaps even college—you likely had an English teacher who would have told you the following sentences are grammatically incorrect:

“And the class went out for coffee after the exam.”

“She needed to immediately get the notes from a classmate.”

“Which chapter did you find that quote in?”

Each of these sentences illustrates one of the common myths of English grammar: don’t begin a sentence with a conjunction; don’t split an infinitive; and don’t end a sentence with a preposition. Each has an easy fix:

“The class went out for coffee after the exam.”

“She needed to get the notes from a classmate immediately.”

“In which chapter did you find that quote?”

But did these sentences need fixing? Not at all, according to an article from Smithsonian magazine. The first rule—don’t begin a sentence with a conjunction—likely came about as a way for English teachers to encourage sentence variation and avoid writing like this from their young students: “And then we went to the park. And we watched the baseball game. And my favorite team won.” The second and third—don’t split infinitives and don’t end a sentence with a preposition—are the result of 17th-, 18th-, and 19th-century academics trying to impose the rules that govern Latin grammar on English.

That said, there are plenty of grammar and usage rules that we do need to follow, rules that even experienced writers sometimes have trouble with. Just don’t let the ghost of your seventh grade English teacher keep you awake at night.