I teach developmental English at a community college. Since I started the gig, I have become very attuned to grammatical errors in published works. Currently I'm re-reading the Harry Potter series and I am extremely annoyed with J.K. Rowling's misuse of "was" in conditional sentences: "If I was a better magician..." (No, that is not a direct quote...I don't have the books with me write now.) The correct form is "If I were...." Of course, when reading the books the first several times, I was so thrilled with the plotting and characterization that I skimmed right past any errors. Now, this one jars me every time that it recurs. Where was her editor?
As I try to teach my students to develop their thoughts and get those thoughts pinned down on paper, I worry that by teaching them about sentence errors, I will be also inhibiting their creativity. But after the creative part--boy, do I hope they learn to fix mistakes like this one.
(No, I don't worry about grammatical errors in blogs...well, not so much, anyway.)
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