Friends, we are gathered here to mourn the death of Good Grammar. Good Grammar lived a long and eventful life, but it was inevitable. It was the death of a thousand pinpricks.

No one knows for sure when Good Grammar was born, but by the 18th century or so she had reached maturity after a long adolescence. In the late 20th century, though, Good Grammar’s health declined rapidly, and upon the dawn of the 21st, Good Grammar found it impossible to carry on.

Good Grammar gave birth to a child, Journalism, and like any good parent Good Grammar tried to instruct Journalism in the way he should go. Like so many children, though, Journalism rebelled. He said he would go about life by his own rules. Journalism printed books that went against the teachings of Good Grammar, most notably The Associated Press Stylebook.

Interestingly, Journalism’s rebellion entailed rules that were more rigid than Good Grammar’s. Journalism made reporters write that people dived and pleaded instead of dove and pled. Journalism’s rules also extended to punctuation, most notably cutting out the comma before the conjunction. While Good Grammar would write “one, two, and three,” Journalism wrote “one, two and three.”

But do not be mistaken; it was not this estranged son that caused Good Grammar to die. Rather, it was that young upstart of society, the Internet. Combine that with people too lazy to learn the basics because Microsoft Word went and marked errors for them, and there was no hope for recovery.

The thousand pinpricks came slow at first, then faster and faster. People didn’t take the time to correctly use your and you’re, to and too. They erroneously used everyday and awhile, even those who should have known better. Then words began to be pushed together incorrectly, most notably the horrendous alot and alright. I might go on, but won’t for fear of someone writing ect. instead of the correct short form of “et cetera,” etc.

In 1998, the New Oxford Dictionary of English worked to finally cure two of Good Grammar’s genetic defects from her Latin roots, allowing split infinitives and letting sentences end with a preposition. But it was too little, too late.

While Good Grammar always had a soft spot for worthy abbreviations, in the last decade of the 20th century it got out of hand. Words that never should have been abbreviated had the life crushed out of them: ppl, plz. AOL Instant Messenger probably personally drove some of the nails in the coffin you see before you. The wrong words began to creep up too often: like, basically, the “four-letter words.”

As the 21st century began, the decline accelerated. When CNN Headline News retooled itself in August 2001, it incorporated use of that phrase grating to Good Grammar’s ears, 24/7. The greatest tragedy in American history, within weeks, began to become nothing more in some papers than 9/11. People began using periods in the wrong places, using them to separate phone numbers and dates.

The decline continued in newspapers of all levels. College students wrote could of and didn’t know the plural of freshman. A front-page headline from Tyler, Texas, on Dec. 24, 2001, read “Elderly Man Looses Home”. The most recent poke, an affront to both Good Grammar and Journalism, has appeared everywhere from a new pasta product, to the stalwarts of USA Today and The Associated Press, to signs at the Iowa State Center: anytime. At least that one appears at dictionary.com, meaning “at any time”, but then some people are even using everytime as one word, which doesn’t exist at all!

Good Grammar lives on in such biographies as William Strunk and E.B. White’s “The Elements of Style,” but whether anyone will read them remains a mystery. Even as I mourn Good Grammar, I insult her, because this printed version must conform to Journalism’s rules. While I try to continue Good Grammar’s legacy, I am often thwarted. As an editor once told me, “It’s journalism, not English.”

I give this eulogy not to bury Good Grammar, but to praise her. It may be hard to carry on the legacy, but perhaps if enough of us do so there might be a chance for it to survive.

Jeff Morrison is a sophomore in journalism and political science from Traer. He is a copy editor for the Daily.