Grammatical rules

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Can anyone help to comment if a knowledge of grammatical rules help or hinder communication? Your kind comments will be much appreciated.CCM

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bd9r4l$(Email Removed)...
[nq:1]Can anyone help to comment if a knowledge of grammatical rules help or hinder communication? Your kind comments will be much appreciated.[/nq]

Will they help whom? Are we talking about native speakers or foreign speakers?

Usenet · Answer

[nq:1]Can anyone help to comment if a knowledge of grammatical rules help or hinder communication? Your kind comments will be much appreciated.[/nq]
Assuming they're the right rules, they will be helpful.

For example, an awareness that singular nouns and pronouns require a corresonding verb form when the present tense is used would have enabled you to write, correctly, "helps or hinders," rather than what you did write.

The words "help to" are superfluous. "And "if" should be "whether."

Beware, however, of rules of grammar and usage that are not real rules but superstitions.

-- Bob Lieblich Books can be and have been written on these topes

Usenet · Answer

(24 Jun 2003) in news:bd9r4l$(Email Removed) / alt.english.usage:
[nq:1]Can anyone help to comment if a knowledge of grammatical rules help or hinder communication? Your kind comments will be much appreciated.[/nq]
If you follow the same rules for creating and receiving messages that your audience does, knowing those rules is irrelevant in communication. The problem is in knowing that you and your audience do, in fact, share the same rules. The received knowledge of the "standard" version of whatever language you use helps enormously; it is only by learning what that standard is that you can apply it.

-- Martin Ambuhl now exiled to Hurricane Bait, Texas

Grammatical rules

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