A war on grammar has begun, and it's all the fault of Sharon Nichols '07.
Grammar's defenders swing red-ink pens and launch complete volumes of the OED at all who dare to dangle a modifier or introduce a pronoun without antecedent, while rebels speak in jarring informalities such as LOL and OMG, and rattle nerves by attaching the suffix -izzle to every other word they utter.
The battleground is Facebook, an online social networking utility where anything is possible: where, for example, millions of proud bacon fans celebrate their favorite breakfast meat while revolutionary activist movements take shape.
The battle began in 2006 when Nichols saw in her favorite Charleston shop a sign that read, "Now Excepting Applications." A bit perturbed, and wanting to share this and similar examples of inexcusably poor grammar and misspellings with friends, Nichols created the Facebook group, "I judge you when you use poor grammar."
"I started the group as a joke," Nichols laughs.
But to her incredulity, membership swelled to its current ranks of 395,000. This army of grammarians has posted on Facebook thousands of bites of butchered English captured in photographs and quoted text.
Here's a sampling: McDonald's urges customers to "Try a Angus Burger." A shuttle bus notifies drivers, "Slow Children Will Run." A neighborhood sign pleas, "Do Not Throwaway Your Trashes, Or Pets Drop To This Lown/ This Is Against Lawn/ We Will Report To Authority With Evidence!!!" Pretty scary, huh?
Not all Facebookers agree. Some think grammar rules are elitist, some prefer run-ons to complete sentences, and some think colons only facilitate the least glamorous of bodily functions. Now these folks gather in groups that proudly judge those who judge others for using poor grammar.
But Nichols and her posse aren't worried, for they have a new weapon in their arsenal. After hearing about her success, St. Martin's Press asked Nichols to collect the group's best (or most horrifying) photographs in a new book, I Judge You When You Use Poor Grammar: A Collection of Egregious Errors, Inadvertent Bloopers, and Other Linguistic Slip-Ups, to be released this fall.
With a book deal and 200 friend requests a week, Nichols is Facebook famous. Only a cluttered inbox slows her down. Every day she deletes dozens of e-mails from cranky grammar haters and flirtatious strangers intent on creeping her out.
But Nichols entered the spotlight prepared. In December 2005, she created Thank You Ma'am, a blog for "political commentary and general frivolity." While completing her degree in political science and philosophy, then moving on to study at Alabama Law, she worked vigorously to make the blog a hit. Her dedication paid off when, in a 2008 poll conducted by the American Bar Association, her readers voted Thank You Ma'am the year's best legal blog by a student.
This fall Nichols begins her final year of law school following an internship at The New Republic, where she's gaining experience writing and analyzing politics. "When I started law school," Nichols says, "I wanted to be a lawyer, but then I stumbled into journalism through my blog."
And through her blog, she became a committed pupil and proponent of proper grammar. Nichols will continue to speak out against serious abuses of language that often go unchecked. Those perpetrated by corporate entities and public leaders bug her most.
Recalling the linguistic inventions of a former president, Nichols argues, "Our leaders should know better, and we should have higher standards."
But until these modal auxiliaries grow obsolete, Nichols and her followers will keep fighting, red pens poised and waiting to strike. 