For casual students of English grammar, there’s a set of hard and fast rules no writer can ever hope to escape. A singular noun must be paired with a singular verb; the Subject-Verb Agreement is the backbone of every sentence. To break these grammatical rules is tantamount to blasphemy and could easily send a writer to pariah status in the blink of an eye.

True, a lot of grammatical rules are here to stay. You still can’t go around passing off phrases as sentences, and — as far as I’m concerned — serial commas are still unappealing. Still, many of the “iron-clad” grammar rules we’ve cherished for years are now crumbling before our very eyes. Why they were foisted on us in the first place is something I can’t answer. Maybe someone should do an in-depth investigative study on that soon.

Anyway, here’s a list of grammar rules you can break. I break them all the time, by the way, even back when I didn’t know it was sort of okay. Maybe you really have to know the rules to break the rules. Check out the list and see if you’ll be breaking any laws soon:

1. Never end with a preposition. A scene in The Big Bang Theory (my tv show du jour) fits nicely into this myth. Leonard is speaking to Dennis, North Korean teenage wunderkind, and gets a bit of verbal bashing:

Leonard: You speak English really well.
Dennis: So do you … except for your tendency to end sentences with prepositions.
Leonard: What are you talking about?
Dennis: That.
Sheldon: He’s not wrong.

Oh but he is, darling Sheldon. It’s just too stuffy to hold on to this rule; a lot of times, ending sentences with prepositions is necessary because it sounds a lot more fluid and realistic. Remember that it’s still the flow and content that’s important — there are sentences that sound better not ending with prepositions.

2. Never start sentences with conjunction words. But they’re such fun! This is actually tied to the rule claiming that it’s borderline illegal to cut your sentences in half. In truth, it’s not such a big deal whether you start your sentences with words like “and” or “but”, as long as it connects quite clearly to the sentiment of the earlier sentence. That way, you still connect the two without having to physically keep them together. Try not to do it too much, though; you don’t want to sound oddly disjointed.

3. “None” is always singular. It isn’t. “None” can be singular or plural, depending on what the sentence is trying to say. Writing “none of them are good enough” is perfectly acceptable.

4. Since can only be used to reference time. I know, you’ve been breaking this rule for years and didn’t even realize it. We’ve been so accustomed to using “since” as an alternative to “because” that we can’t even see where this rule comes from. Just goes to show how dated this rule is.

5. “Woe is I”. The explanation for this is pretty steep even for a grammar geek like me. Just remember, it’s not “woe is I”; even Shakespeare went with “woe is me”. The first one is horribly stuffy and sounds a bit pompous, so there’s no point keeping it alive.

For more of these debunked grammar rules, check out the following sites:

Errors That Aren’t: 12 Grammar Rules You Can Toss Out the Window
Woe is Us

XOXO,