I've heard it said that grammar doesn't really matter, that language is dynamic, fluid, and that usage changes, and that we shouldn't get hung up on misplaced apostrophes, split infinitives, wrong tenses, and the like.
I'm one of those people who gets very distracted if I spot some error in grammar when I'm reading text and that's not just irritating. It can spoil the enjoyment of an otherwise well-written piece of writing. Part of me is accommodating and I just assume that it was a slip of the pen or perhaps that the author didn't know about the grammar, or perhaps that it's an integral part of the author's style. But another part of me is far less forgiving.
I become irritated because my attention has been taken away from the text itself and I then have to pull myself back to it. Surely, if the author wanted my attention, they would have avoided the distraction in the first place and made sure my focus remained on the writing. It makes me feel as though the author didn't care enough about my attention, and if that's correct, why should I bother?
Inside dialogue, grammatical rules are regularly broken because people generally do not speak grammatically. We abbreviate, we deliberately distort the language for effect, we invent new words and give new meanings to old ones. We paraphrase, mock, copy, elaborate, and corrupt language in whatever way we choose. That's what everyone does. “He done good!” is a perfectly valid piece of dialogue because the character may well have used that kind of construction.
But to write something like “I gave him alot of support” is, to my mind, unacceptable. The word “alot” means to allocate; what the author means is “a lot”, two words, meaning a large quantity. This howler is becoming increasingly prevalent, especially in the way people express themselves in blogs, forums, and online generally. Even websites are not immune.
When I read, I want to be drawn along by the writing and I get irritated if that flow is interrupted by poor grammar. But does it really make much difference in the long run? Eventually, maybe readers like myself will just accommodate to it and stop being so tetchy. I'll just realise that when someone has written “their” they really mean “they're”, and just let it pass. Where professional editors are involved, they'll probably catch these mistakes, but in the land of self-publishing, maybe these errors will survive into print. But although I relish the idea of language changing and developing, these errors indicate to me that the expressiveness of language is being diminished. Some people are losing the accuracy and power of their own language, or failing to acquire it, and I find that hard to accept, especially in people who want to be writers.
The best advice for writers, I think, is to read a book that identifies these mistakes and to proof-read their own work carefully to catch them. One useful and interesting book is Sin and Syntax by Constance Hale, but even a brief look at Bryson's Dictionary for Writers and Editors is time very well spent.
For me in my writing, the priority is not to distract the reader from the flow of the story. I don't want readers thinking about apostrophes, past participles, spellings, and whether it should be “that” or “which”. I want them to be immersed in what I've written and if I suddenly pull them out of the story, that's my fault and I should have fixed the problem earlier. That to me, is the real importance of getting the grammar right.
Sometimes the querks of unusual grammar add a special quality to the writing, an ambience which could not exist in the context of formal construction. Read Faulkner, or Franzen, or Saramago and you'll see how this works. But it has to be deliberate, controlled, to the point. If sloppy grammar just appears because the author knows no better, then the effects won't be magical and enhancing the writing, but just a distraction and an irritation to the reader.
So grammar does matter. Writers do need to know about it and understand it. Only then can they decide what to do with it. It's not a law but it is an important aspect of language and goes hand in hand with a good vocabulary.
