Writing teacher Richard Weaver says: 'Using a language may be compared to riding a horse:
much of one's success depends upon an understanding of what it can and will do'.
Knowing grammar can make you into a truly great writer. The basis of grammatical awareness is sentence sense and this comes with reading. Poor writers cannot or do not read their own writing accurately or perceptively.
They lack a reader's perspective. You need to read widely. Read! Read! Read! Just like the grammar goblin. Wide reading, particularly of authors who write very well, will help you to absorb a great deal about grammatical, syntactical, and punctuation patterns and the craft of writing. The better we understand English, the greater our pleasure in reading it. If you're already confident about your writing, reading syntactically challenging writing can be helpful, too. Find a piece of writing that you admire and try to analyse why it works for you.
Understanding grammar and syntax will help you to do this. Do you agree with Dot Wordsworth's comment that "It's cruel not to teach grammar to children"?
