I am not the grammarian about whom your parents warned you

In fact, I probably couldn’t diagram a sentence if all the nuns at Holy Rosary simultaneously threatened my knuckles with wooden rulers … again.

I’ve been an editor many times and I have a collection of old business cards and job descriptions to prove it. I’m a good proofreader and above average speller (this would definitely surprise the good sisters) and often edit or rewrite drafts provided by clients and other writers.

As a writer myself, I try hard to improve others’ writing without imposing my own style and preferences. Not always easy. My own teachable moment occurred a decade or so ago when, in frustration, a good writer on my staff asked, “Is the goal of this publication to have everything read like Bill Hiniker wrote it?”

It wasn’t. As an experienced ghostwriter and speechwriter, I pride myself on being able to write in my clients’ voices. Publications – like choirs – have more texture when they employ different kinds of voices. Kumbaya. Amen.

I only recently learned the difference between “preposition” and “proposition” … the hard way. But I know good grammar, punctuation and usage when I see it.

I was raised on the AP Style Guide and William Strunk. I cherish my well-worn copy of “The Careful Writer,” given to me by a boss and mentor on my last day as an Air Force journalist. I actually read “Eats, Shoots and Leaves” for fun. I miss Bill Safire.

In many ways I am unapologetically old school. I try to correctly spell words. I think a preposition is still not a great thing to end a sentence with. I check the meanings of words with which I’m not completely familiar. I like it when subjects and verbs are of like mind. Stuff like that.

But early in my journalism training an instructor passed out an article from, of all places, the “Reader’s Digest,” which advocated that people should “write the way they speak,” rather than in the more formal style favored by English teachers of the time (including those dear, and now departed, sisters).

Said another way, it’s better to express than to impress. This is especially true in the social media era, when every word is at a premium.