Grammar Coup, by Frances FitzGerald

I.

In this era of political unrest and polarization, Florence Farmer’s trusty band of university writing center tutors decided that our nation needed new leadership. They reasoned that fine writers and effective tutors could accomplish far more than the House and Senate had so far.

Armed with nothing more than Writing Center pencils, dictionaries, thesauruses, and an updated Diane Hacker handbook, the Writing Center staff took a bus to Washington, D.C. Upon their arrival, they rounded up Congress, the Senate, the president, and his cabinet.

The university writing center staff challenged the U.S. government to a grammar-off. The winners would run the government. Why the politicians agreed is still a mystery. These literate upstarts must have impressed them with their vocabularies exceeding 75 words and their perfect pronunciation of multi-syllabic words.

One of the tutors, Celia Franklin, a short blonde in the Sign Language Studies program, boldly asked the governing body, “What are the nine parts of speech?”

Both Democrats and Republicans could be heard muttering, “Noun, verb, subject, gerund…” “Is a modifier a part of speech?” “I haven’t diagrammed a sentence since I was in eighth grade,” “Do independent clauses count?” “I don’t even know what a conjunction is,” “Why can’t they ask us math questions?”

Tutor Madhia Abdi was only 4’10”, but her disgust was enormous. She sighed heavily and said, “The parts of speech are verb, noun, adjective, determiner, adverb, pronoun, preposition, conjunction and interjection. Okay, zero points for the government.”  

A round-faced tutor with a curly ponytail—Rose Davis—said, “Here’s your second question: What is a predicate?”

One legislator raised his hand and said excitedly, “It’s a problem there’s no easy solution to.”

“Wrong!” thundered Carl Ledbetter, a tall tutor with red hair and a vast red beard. “You’re thinking of ‘predicament,’ which is what you’ve all put our country in because you care more about your own egos and pocketbooks than the American people!”

A tall, slim brunette, Tutor Rosalyn Schultz, said to the embarrased representative, “I’m sorry, sir, but a predicate is a word group that follows the subject to complete the meaning of sentence or clause.”

Chivonn Johnson, pushing her feed-in braids behind her shoulders, said, “You’ve failed two out of three simple grammar questions. You have one more chance.”

Susan Jakowski, a tutor with long brown hair and a quiet voice, stepped in to ask, “What parts of speech does an adverb modify?”

More murmurs emerged from the legislative body. “What does she mean by ‘modify?’” “What does an adverb do?” “Does it have anything to do with advertising?” “I majored in political science, not English!” “Why don’t they ask about the latest sexual misconduct scandal?” “I majored in criminal justice, not English!”

A nervous representative tentatively raised her hand and said, “An adverb modifies a semi-colon?”

“That doesn’t even make sense!” said a vertically challenged older tutor, Deborah Baker, pushing her glasses up the bridge of her nose. “Adverbs modify verbs, adjectives, and other adverbs! You lose!”

The tutors watched a lot of faces turn red. The representatives then looked at each other, shrugged, got up, packed up their coats and briefcases, and headed out to their respective cars. “It’s time for a change, anyway,” said Chuck Schumer with a sigh.

After they all left, Tutor Sativa Robbins said—twisting the end of her blond braid—“Does this mean we’re in charge?”

It did.

II.

At first, they did a pretty decent job. This was no small feat, considering that Flo—their so-called leader—appointed herself Secretary of daytime TV. She spent her days lying on a couch in the oval office, inhaling M&Ms, and flipping channels on her 75”-screen television. Carol McCarthy, a highly competent, “mature” staff member who’d worked at the Writing Center for nearly eight years, became the de facto president.

Through their vibrant imaginations, exhaustive research, and flawless teamwork, the writing center staff made great progress, including the following successes:

1.     They reformed our tax system so brilliantly that the poor, the middle-class, the wealthy, and the big corporations all got a tax break while our national deficit shrunk. It’s amazing what a nationwide coupon-clipping movement can accomplish.

2.    They got Vladimir Putin hooked on the video game Call of Duty. He became so addicted that he no longer had time to meddle in foreign elections.

3.     They sent plenty of Valerian, an herbal sedative, to Kim Jong Un. Because he’s still snoozing, North Korea put its nuclear program on hold.

      Since the House and Senate had closed up, the writing center staff used the politicians' salaries for much-needed social programs. They also gave themselves hefty raises, a marked increase from their previous writing center wages. As bald and bearded Tutor Jacob Rabinovitz pointed out, “Grammar is worth more than $8.90 an hour.”

III.

So that first week went swimmingly, and the writing center staff’s approval ratings hovered around 98%. They were featured as “Writing center staff of the year” on the cover of Time Magazine. They appeared on the Late Show with Steven Colbert. There was talk of a group Nobel Peace Prize. Writing center staff action figures and lunch boxes started flying off the shelves.

Then things got weird.

One morning during the second week of their reign, everybody except Flo met around the presidential conference table.

“You know what bothers me?” said Sally Dwyer, another tall tutor with long, wavy blond hair. “Those signs in grocery stores that say ’12 items or less.’ ‘Items’ is a count noun, so they should read, ’12 items or fewer.’”

Tutor Dante Pinkerton concurred, nodding his head so vigorously that his locs trembled. “Yeah, that’s pretty bad. But antecedent-pronoun disagreement is my real pet peeve. Like ‘Everybody has to turn their paper in.’”

Skinny and bespectacled Tutor Cassandra Foderetti mused, “Apostrophe anarchy really irritates me, especially when the writer uses an apostrophe on a plural, not possessive, noun.”

Janet Larson (tutor with the most feminist buttons pinned to her handbag, such as “Feminist Killjoy,” “Well-behaved Women Rarely Make History,” and “The Future is Female”) banged her fist on the table. “What we need are new laws,” she said vehemently. “If we are to be a respected, literate nation, we must enforce gender-neutral pronouns and other sins against the English language!”

Carol McCarthy’s sane and reasonable advice—“Let’s use some common sense here”—was drowned out by a babel of excited voices: “Yes! Fines for subject-verb disagreement!” “Community service for inappropriate tense shifts!” “Prison time for misplaced modifiers!” “Solitary confinement for fused sentences!”

Carol was understandably alarmed at this surging mob dynamic. She found Flo in the Oval Office, sleeping on the couch, traces of chocolate still on her lips. She shook her shoulder. “Wake up, Flo! I think the power of national governance is going to the tutors’ heads! We have to stop them!”

“I’m out of M&Ms,” Flo said sleepily. “And my blood sugar levels have plunged. You deal with it.”

But Carol feared it was already too late.

IV

The public didn’t take these new grammar/punctuation laws very seriously at first. But when Marshall Law was announced, voters everywhere started throwing out their writing center staff action figures. It’s not like they were superheroes, and not one of them wore a cape or wielded a light-up lasso. Also, they were disinvited from The Tonight Show with Conan O’Brien. But they weren’t fazed. The writing center staff  (except for wise Carol and sleepy Flo) became arrogant zealots, and this is what happened:

·        * E.L. James, author of Fifty Shades of Grey, faced charges of committing comma splices.

·        * All versions of Star Trek were taken off the air because of its careless “to boldly go” split infinitive.

·        * A former office holder was expunged from the history books for saying, “Rarely is the question asked: Is our children learning?”

·        * Kozy Kafe owners were forced to shut down until they learned to spell properly.

·        * A successful lawyer was de-barred for writing “it’s” as a possessive instead of “its.”

V.

No one was surprised when the lot of them were impeached in one fell swoop. Once they joined a 12-step grammar addiction program (except for Flo, who faithfully attended her 12-step M&M addiction program), they began to recognize that their behavior had been extreme. Step No. 8—“I will make a list of all persons I have harmed, and become willing to make amends to them all”— was a little tricky. Do you know how many Kozy Kafe owners there are across our great nation? And boy, are they steamed.

The writing center staff finally returned to their university with their heads down. Some of them still wear Groucho Marx masks to hide their identities. Still, they have learned from their mistakes. The biggest lesson is this: Yes, grammar and punctuation errors are unfortunate, but they’re no excuse to act like jerks.