Lessons From a Rollicking Grammar Road Trip

On the first day of fall in 2018, I set up a grammar advice stand outside a New York City subway station and began answering the grammar questions of total strangers. My advice stand was low budget: it consisted of a $40 folding table and a sign I drew myself reading “Grammar Table.”

Although I had never had a grammar advice stand before, the activity was in sync with my lifelong professional interests and activities. I’d always loved words. I had degrees in German and comparative literature, I’d taught writing at various colleges, I’d worked as a freelance writer, and for years I had been teaching writing, email etiquette, and grammar through a communication skills training firm, Syntaxis, that my husband and I started in 1999.

I also studied over 25 languages as part of a nine-year project I had called “Words & Worlds of New York.” For that, I tested and reviewed hundreds of self-study products, and I joined oodles of online language groups. Between blogging and grammar chats, my language life was increasingly online. I started to crave more real-life interactions. Language connects us to other human beings, and I was missing the human part.

I wanted to take grammar to the people.

Even before I set up the Grammar Table, I knew people would come up and talk to me. In spite of a pervasive view that grammar is boring and no one cares about it, people love talking about the details of the words we use. Not everyone, of course — but many, many people. Language is a magical, beautiful part of our time on this planet.

When I teach business writing classes, students often get most excited about the smallest things — Oxford commas, for example. Or whether to keep or delete a “that.” There is joy in haggling over details.

At the Grammar Table, visitors talked to me about apostrophes, participles, comma splices, spaces after periods, poetry, language-learning, spelling, pronunciation, and more. They talked of past grammar traumas from school. One woman, a dancer, performed a segment of a dance she had choreographed to a preposition song back in elementary school. Another, a footnote lover, had an actual footnote tattooed on her foot!

Within less than a month, the Grammar Table began getting press, first locally and then nationally. My husband, Brandt Johnson, noted the emotional depth of some of the encounters and began filming them. He decided to make a movie about the adventures of the Grammar Table. I wrote a book proposal describing how we would travel around the country; Brandt would make a movie while I would write the book. I got a book deal.

In 2019 and early 2020, we traveled to 47 states. We did travel loops ranging from 10 days to multiple weeks, driving north in the summer and south in colder months. In between trips we’d catch up on our corporate training work. One of my favorite grammar stops was Red Cloud, Nebraska, a town of around 1,000 that had been home to the writer Willa Cather. We had an animated conversation there about whether it was okay to end a sentence with a preposition. (It is.)

By early 2020, Covid shut us down. We taught remotely, I worked on the book, and Brandt worked on the movie. I organized the book by topic and put little quizzes in it, including in chapter titles — for example, “I Saw ___ (a, an) UFO on Main Street.” I indexed Brandt under “apostrophes, husband who knows how to use.”

The book came out in July 2022 and was a national bestseller. That summer we finally went to the remaining three states.

I care a lot about grammar, but I care even more about the human connection afforded by the Grammar Table. When I teach business writing, I focus a lot on authenticity. Drop the stiff awkwardness and unnecessary jargon! Talk to people as human beings! And watch it with those 75-word sentences — you could hurt someone with those things!

The movie took six years to make. It has the same title as the book, "Rebel with a Clause,” and Brandt was the producer, director, cinematographer, and editor of the film. He is the film equivalent of a one-man band.

The movie had its world premiere in Washington, D.C., on 10 January at the language museum Planet Word. People in the theater laughed and laughed, and I think some of them also cried. Yes, the movie is about grammar, but it’s also about community. We need one another.

We are now preparing for the New York City premiere on National Grammar Day, which is 4 March, and we have screening events scheduled in multiple cities for 2025. We hope to see some of you there.

Editor’s note: Take this quiz from Ellen to test your grammar savvy.