Explanation:
Martha Brockenbrough had had enough. She had seen the word abused and abased and simply wouldn’t stand for another instance of the poor innocent language being treated poorly in her presence. Not on her watch! So it was that Martha decided that all good verbs, adverbs, nouns, and adjectives deserved a day when people stood up for their rights and refused to allow them to be abused. No more would apostrophes be lost, forgotten, or misplaced. No more would we find commas left out and proper nouns in lower case; those days were in the past, and thus she wrote “Things that makes us [sic]” to help spread the word about poor grammar.
National Grammar Day was first held in 2008 and it’s still going strong. Martha Brockenbrough also happens to be the founder of the Society for the Promotion of Good Grammar, which helps to promote excellent grammar all year. In the first year that the day was held, it was commemorated in a letter sent by former President George W. Bush. Even the chosen date has a special meaning. Brockenbrough chose March 4th because it’s also an instruction – “March forth!” She wants people to speak well, write well, and help others to do the same thing.
The day was developed not just to berate people for making the wrong grammar choices but also to celebrate the positive side of language. Good use of grammar and language ensures your intended meaning comes across. And once you have grasped the foundation of good grammar, you can use it to be creative, educational, informative and passionate about anything that you want to write about.
Grammar is a vital part of communication, as the inclusion or exclusion of certain grammatical elements can completely change the meaning of a sentence. What do you do when you see signs marked with a “Harsh Brown Potato” breakfast? Or grocer signs that announce that you can get your “Glutten Free” foods here? How about the time KEYE TV in Texas proclaimed “Department of Criminal Justice: What their doing to fix it”? Really, no matter where you go or what you do for a living, grammatical errors are a problem that we all need to be aware of.
Answer:
Old Man Warner, the oldest man in town, has participated in seventy-seven lotteries and is a staunch advocate for keeping things exactly the way they are. He dismisses the towns and young people who have stopped having lotteries as “crazy fools,” and he is threatened by the idea of change. He believes, illogically, that the people who want to stop holding lotteries will soon want to live in caves, as though only the lottery keeps society stable. He also holds fast to what seems to be an old wives’ tale—“Lottery in June, corn be heavy soon”—and fears that if the lottery stops, the villagers will be forced to eat “chickweed and acorns.” Again, this idea suggests that stopping the lottery will lead to a return to a much earlier era, when people hunted and gathered for their food. These illogical, irrational fears reveal that Old Man Warner harbors a strong belief in superstition. He easily accepts the way things are because this is how they’ve always been, and he believes any change to the status quo will lead to disaster. This way of thinking shows how dangerous it is to follow tradition blindly, never questioning beliefs that are passed down from one generation to the next.
I think someone is knocking at the door
