“creationists”), high school students asleep at their desks, stalactites of drool hanging from their lips. Now it conjures everything unglamorous: nagging perfectionists, pedantic correctionists (my spell checker wants me to change that word to In the common imagination, grammar has lost all those enchanting associations. Grammarian Screamin’ Jay Hawkins once explained, “I put a spell on you … cause you’re mine.” That connection between language and magic may be clearer in the word “spell.” It denotes both the order of letters to form words and an incantation to show your mystical power and influence. It stood for language knowledge connected to all kinds of learning, including the dark arts. In the day, grammar had a much broader meaning. As Casey Stengel once said: “You could look it up.” The link turns out to be magic. At one time in the history of the language “glamour” and “grammar” were the same word.
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