The Rules of Grammar

i before e, except after the letter c. What does this even mean?

Although Stovall makes a strong case for knowing the rules of grammar, I am one of the few people who do not think that this knowledge is extremely important. Believe it or not, I did not start learning the rules of grammar until high school. As a child, I was never taught the rules of grammar, punctuation, or phonics. However, I have always been good at organizing my thoughts in a clear manner and making them sound good on paper. With this said, I always did well in all my English classes and was even placed in English honors all throughout high school. It wasn’t until college did I notice that I would receive lower grades on my papers because of spelling, grammar and punctuation. Therefore, I started getting my papers proofread before handing them in.

As my tutor read over my paper, she would point out any mistakes and explain to me what was wrong with that sentence. As months passed, whenever I took a paper to be proofread, she would find less and less mistakes. The reason for this was not because she taught me the rules of grammar, but because I continued to write. Even to this day I am still not familiar with all the grammatical rules, but I still write well. Writing a paper comes natural to me and I seem to be good at doing it. Therefore, I do not believe one has to know why an i goes before e, except after the letter c, or the difference between an active or passive voice. If you are a good writer and can get your point across in a well written manner, then knowing the rules of grammar is not that important.