Don't worry about grammar

One either absorbs the grammatical principles of one's native language in conversation and in reading or one does not. What Sophomore English does (or tries to do) is little more than naming of parts.

Stephen King, On Writing

Stephen King is right. We don't learn grammar in school. We learn it before we even get to school. We may not know an adjective from an adverb or what past participle means (I still don't), but if we are raised in a home where reasonably good grammar was spoken and if we've watched Sesame Street and other television programs, then we already use reasonably good grammar. One thing small children can do better than adults is learn a language.

People complain that they have never had to use the algebra and geometry they had to learn in high school. Well most of us never use the grammar we had to learn in high school either. That's because, as King says, what we learned was mostly the "naming of parts," the vocabulary. And one doesn't need to know the vocabulary of grammar to use good grammar, either in speech or in writing. You don't need to know what the phrase "the object of the preposition" means to use prepositions correctly.

Yes, we may sometimes think back to old lessons about whether we should say me or I, or who or whom. Yet these are minor problems. The grammar most people use most of the time is just fine. Spelling can be a big problem. So can using one word when we actually mean another. But grammar? We learned that before we were in the first grade, or we will never learn it.

That's why King devotes so little space to grammar in his book of advice for writers. His advice just boils down to this: Don't worry about it.