Grammar

Everyone knows that cover letters must be spotless. Most people know to be careful as they type e-mails for work. , =, & and @ are allowed. * Shortened word forms such as nite and thru are allowed. * Use proper basic punctuation. * Use proper capitalization. Typing in lower-case doesn't save characters; it's just lazy. Grammar Girl's Quick and Dirty Tips For Better Writing

Grammar ain't what it used to be.Time was, teachers whacked us on the knuckles when our subjects and verbs didn't match up. College professors shamed us for not never showing up for class.At least we knew right from wrong back then.Now, anything goes. They tell us it's OK to knowingly split infinitives. They say a preposition is a fine thing to end a sentence with. And they say we can start a sentence with "and."And even "but."But only if we don't overdo it.Linguists, lexicographers and grammarians disagree on what is proper grammar these days.

NEW YORK - The third-graders at P.S. 277 in Brooklyn twist upward in their seats, hands fluttering on outstretched arms like flags atop a pole. As teacher Janet Kennedy recognizes them, they march in turn to the blackboard, drawing a collection of lines and connecting dots that would be foreign to almost anyone who graduated from college in the past 20 years or so. This is no arts-in-the-schools project, or even some beginning geometry lesson. The enthusiastic 8-year-olds are learning to diagram sentences.

It probably comes as no surprise to those of us who have read our kids' composition papers, but a new study by Penn State researchers finds that text messaging is eroding the literacy skills of our tweens. The survey of 228 students in the sixth, seventh and eighth grades, found that those kids who use "techspeak" when they text scored lower on grammar assessment tests. The study was published in New Media and Society . With techspeak kids use phonetic spelling or abbreviations to make texting faster.

Being a teacher's pet as a child endeared me to no one but teachers. My third-grade teacher, Marian Gulley, once let me take a fourth-graders' history test. (At Elizaville Elementary School, the third and fourth grades were in a single classroom; the teacher instructed one class while the other studied, then reversed.) I scored a 96, from having listened to the fourth-grade class and read their history textbook for amusement. It was the highest grade on the test. I was proud, but my mother observed sagely, "I bet that didn't make you many friends in the fourth grade.

If you read about language, grammar, and usage, you're as likely to come across rubbish and codswallop as anything else. Thus there is joy at the arrival of a new voice of sense and informed judgment. Stan Carey of Sentence First heralded the arrival last week of Caxton , a new blog on language. Today's post at Caxton includes a reminder about the rules of language that rule-mongers would do well to keep in mind. And it is not novel information, coming from the pen of John Colet, humanist of the English Renaissance and dean of St. Paul's (d. 1519)

A huge diamond engagement ring given to Jacqueline Kennedy by Aristotle Onassis was just one of the items up for bid at yesterday's auction of the former first lady's belongings.Buyers paid $42,500 for Jackie's French grammar book and $32,200 for a sofa.For additional auction highlights, see the full story on Page 5e.Pub Date: 4/25/96

Three non-credit courses in the Italian language are being offered by the Circolo Culturale Italiano beginning Sept. 16.The classes are beginning Italian, intermediate Italian grammar, and advanced reading and conversation.They will be held from 8 p.m. to 9:30 p.m. once a week for 10 weeks at the College of Notre Dame.L For information, call 339-6381. After 7 p.m., call 243-0746.To enroll, send a check for $60 payable to CCI-Scuola by Aug. 31 to CCI-Scuola, 3737 Keswick Road, Baltimore, 21211.

In school in eastern Kentucky in the early 1960s, I got the benefit of traditional teaching of grammar: These are the rules; follow them. Mathematics was taught the same way: These are the functions; do them this way. In neither case was the underlying logic explained. I did well in English, not because of the instruction, but because I intuitively grasped the underlying logic. Think about diagramming sentences. I loved doing that, because I already had a grasp about the way the components operated together, and diagramming was an amusing way to illustrate the relationships graphically.

An inveterate meddler, I stepped into a minor controversy on Twitter today about the use of periods or, as our colleagues across the water call them, full stops.  Someone innocently inquired of @guardianstyle, "Full stop at the end of a bullet point?" To which @guardianstyle replied, "Yes. Every time. Like this. " Seemed sensible enough to me, but Patrick Neylan, tweeting as @AngrySubEditor, demurred: "I disagree. If it's not a sentence, it has no right to claim a full stop.