Grammar Myths to Stop Believing
Your high school English teacher meant well. She wanted you to write clearly and correctly.
But somewhere along the way, a bunch of made-up rules got passed off as real grammar laws. These myths persist because they sound official and because people keep repeating them.
Time to let them go.
Never End a Sentence with a Preposition
This rule is nonsense. The idea came from Latin, where you physically can’t end sentences with prepositions because of how the language works.
English isn’t Latin. Forcing yourself to avoid ending with prepositions creates awkward, stuffy sentences.
“What are you talking about?” sounds natural. “About what are you talking?” sounds like you’re trying too hard.
Winston Churchill supposedly mocked this rule by saying, “This is the sort of English up with which I will not put.”
The joke illustrates how ridiculous the rule becomes in practice. You can end sentences with prepositions.
You should end sentences with prepositions when it sounds better. Grammar serves clarity, not outdated ideas about what makes language proper.
Never Split an Infinitive
An infinitive is the “to” form of a verb—to run, to jump, to write. Splitting an infinitive means putting a word between “to” and the verb, as in “to boldly go.”
Critics claim this breaks grammar rules. They’re wrong.
The rule comes from Latin again, where infinitives are single words that can’t be split. English infinitives are two words, and you can put adverbs between them without breaking anything.
“To boldly go” is perfectly fine. Star Trek understood this.
Sometimes splitting an infinitive actually clarifies meaning. “She failed to completely understand the concept” is clearer than “She failed completely to understand the concept,” which could mean she failed completely or understood incompletely.
Split away.
Don’t Start Sentences with “And” or “But”
Open any novel. You’ll find sentences starting with “and” or “but.”
Professional writers do this constantly because it works. The prohibition against it is a myth, probably invented by elementary school teachers trying to stop kids from writing sentence fragments.
“And” and “but” are coordinating conjunctions. They connect ideas.
Starting a sentence with one creates emphasis and rhythm. The previous paragraph started with “and.” This one started with “and” too.
The English language didn’t collapse. You learned this fake rule as a child because young writers needed to master basic sentence structure first.
You’re not in third grade anymore. Start sentences however you want.
Use “Whom” Instead of “Who”
“Whom” is dying, and that’s fine. The distinction between “who” and “whom” confuses most people because English lost most of its case system centuries ago.
“Whom” is the object form, but figuring out when to use it requires grammatical analysis that most speakers don’t do. “Who did you give it to?” works perfectly well in modern English, even though prescriptivists insist on “To whom did you give it?” The second version sounds pretentious in casual conversation.
Even in formal writing, “who” increasingly replaces “whom” without anyone noticing or caring. Language changes.
Holding onto “whom” won’t make you sound smarter—it’ll make you sound like you’re stuck in 1950.
Never Use “They” for a Singular Person
English has used singular “they” for centuries. Shakespeare used it.
Jane Austen used it. The usage appears throughout historical texts because English lacks a gender-neutral singular pronoun, and “they” fills that gap naturally.
“Someone left their umbrella” sounds better than “Someone left his or her umbrella.” Your brain doesn’t stumble over singular “they” in speech.
Only when people worry about formal writing does this become an issue, and even that’s changing. Major style guides now accept singular “they.” The objection to singular “they” is recent, invented by grammarians in the 18th century who wanted English to follow Latin patterns.
Ignore them. Use “they” when you need a singular, gender-neutral pronoun.
The language has done this for hundreds of years.
Don’t Use “Literally” to Mean “Figuratively”
People have used “literally” for emphasis, even when describing figurative situations, since the 1700s. Writers like F. Scott Fitzgerald, James Joyce, and Charlotte Brontë did it.
The usage bothers people now because language commentators decided to make it an issue. When someone says, “I literally died laughing,” you know they didn’t actually die.
The hyperbole is obvious. Using “literally” for emphasis is a standard feature of informal English.
Fighting this usage is fighting how people naturally speak. Dictionaries now include both definitions—the strict “in a literal manner” and the informal “used for emphasis.”
Language evolves. This battle is over.
Always Use Complete Sentences
Fragments work. They create emphasis.
They mirror how people actually talk. Professional writers use them all the time for effect.
The rule against fragments makes sense in certain contexts—academic papers, business reports, formal documents. But it’s not absolute.
Look at advertising copy, journalism, fiction, or casual writing. Fragments appear constantly because they’re punchy and direct.
“Not a chance.” “Absolutely.” “Never again.” These aren’t complete sentences, but they communicate perfectly.
The key is knowing when fragments work and when they don’t. Sometimes you need complete sentences for clarity.
Sometimes a fragment hits harder. Understanding the difference matters more than following a blanket rule.
“I” Before “E” Except After “C”
This rule has more exceptions than examples. Weird, science, their, height, foreign, neighbor, weigh—the list goes on.
The full rhyme includes “or when sounded like ‘A’ as in neighbor and weigh,” but even that doesn’t cover everything. Ancient, efficient, sufficient, and glacier all break the rule.
So do seize, protein, and caffeine. The rule tries to simplify English spelling, which can’t be simplified because English borrowed words from dozens of languages, each with different spelling patterns.
Stop teaching this to children. Just learn how words are spelled.
There’s no shortcut that actually works.
Avoid Passive Voice Always
Passive voice has its place. Sometimes you don’t know who performed an action: “The window was broken.”
Sometimes the actor doesn’t matter: “The report was filed on time.” Sometimes you want to emphasize what happened rather than who did it: “The vaccine was developed after years of research.”
The blanket rule against passive voice comes from writing guides that encourage directness and action. That’s good advice generally, but making it absolute is wrong.
Active voice is often stronger, but passive voice serves specific purposes. Good writers choose between active and passive based on what they want to emphasize.
Bad writers follow rules without thinking about why those rules exist.
Don’t End Sentences with “At”
“Where are you at?” bothers people, but it’s common in many dialects of English. The complaint is that “at” is redundant—”where” already implies location.
But language isn’t always about efficiency. Sometimes extra words add emphasis or feel more natural in speech.
This is more about register than grammar. In formal writing, you’d probably write “Where are you?” In casual conversation, “Where are you at?” sounds friendlier, less abrupt.
Both are grammatically acceptable. Regional and class biases often hide behind these “rules.”
People stigmatize perfectly valid language features because they associate them with certain groups. That’s not grammar—that’s prejudice.
“There’s” Can’t Be Used with Plural Nouns
“There’s three reasons” sounds natural to most English speakers, even though technically “there’s” is a contraction of “there is,” which should take a singular noun. In rapid speech, people use “there’s” with both singular and plural nouns without anyone misunderstanding.
Prescriptive grammarians say you must use “there are” with plural nouns. They’re technically correct based on how contractions work, but actual usage differs.
In informal speech and writing, “there’s” with plurals is standard. Formal writing should probably use “there are” with plurals.
But informal contexts? Say what sounds natural.
Communication beats technicality.
You Can’t Use “That” for People
“The woman who called earlier” versus “The woman who called earlier”—both work fine. The idea that you must use “who” for people and “that” for things is another made-up distinction.
English has always allowed “that” for people in relative clauses. The preference for “who” with people is stylistic, not grammatical.
Some style guides recommend it for clarity or elegance, but many professional writers use “that” for people regularly. Neither choice is wrong.
This is a preference, not a rule. Choose whichever sounds better in your sentence.
Rules Versus Guidelines
Grammar’s there to make talking easier, not to set up pointless obstacles. Actual rules? They’re just ways we keep things clear – like matching subjects with verbs, keeping words in order, or sticking to one tense.
We follow these since ignoring them leads to mix-ups. The ideas here? They’re not actual grammar laws at all.
Just choices in how people like to write – sometimes showing background or old habits tied to Latin rules. A few started with teachers trying their best.
Some came from folks who thought English should act more orderly. The thing is, English doesn’t play by logic.
It’s cluttered, steals words freely, shifts nonstop – and still gets the job done. Be clear when you write.
Think about who’s reading it. Stick to what actually helps avoid mix-ups.
Skip everything else.
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