Want to Make Money Writing? Understand How Language Works

Don’t break the rules until you OWN them

In 2013, this image made me chuckle. It still does. Artist unknown.

You won’t make a fortune as a writer if you don’t understand how language works and why that’s important. It’s pointless to argue that one use of a word or phrase is absolutely correct and all other forms are dead wrong. There is often no perfect rule for writing or even punctuating since several things impact any language, some without much forewarning. Bang! OMG suddenly appears as a word in the freaking Oxford Dictionary! That’s a true story.

Every language is flexible—you can see that in regional dialects and in how different communities use different terms or pronunciations for certain concepts. In Chicago, the main room of a home is often called the “frontroom” (in old Chicago, it’s pronounced frun troom). Whereas in England, the same room is known as the lounge or even the drawing room.

Rules are made to be broken, and when it becomes too difficult to stick to the rules, we make new rules. Case in point: the word ain’t, which is a contraction of who-knows-what. In days gone by, it was a preferred word of British hoi polloi—the upper class. Once ain’t was relegated to downhome folk, then it was scrubbed from the minds of schoolchildren as a word that “doesn’t exist.” But it has never gone away.

One of my grammar school teachers (now there’s real irony, grammar school) chanted, “Ain’t ain’t in the dictionary, so I ain’t never gonna say ain’t no more.” Lovely. But excuse me, ain’t is certainly in modern dictionaries, and I defy you to describe a comfortable replacement for the question, “Ain’t I?”

How language works: How do we know good grammar from bad grammar?

Rules governing how components of language are assembled describe the grammar of the language. For US English, there is no bona fide government office that takes on that task, though the Department of Education publishes curriculum guidelines. USA.gov says the United States does not have an official language, but some states declare their own.

So, how do we decide you can’t end a sentence with a preposition or split an infinitive? You’d better sit down if you’re a member of the grammar police because you might not have a leg to stand on.

Yes, we have syntax—tthat’s the accepted order for things like subjects, predicates, and objects in sentences. Syntax prevents sentences like “Tables are for eating customers only.” But no one is sure where syntax came from or even specifically what all the rules are.

Dictionaries are helpful if you want to know how language works. Keep in mind that dictionaries change stuff willy-nilly. We find OMG as a word, along with recent additions like adorkable and fleek. So you can’t completely count on them for hard and fast rules, though they do ensure that we consistently use bird for avian creatures or cat for felines.

And then there’s common usage, and I’m here to tell you that is the most powerful governor of any language. It will grow more powerful as education systems scramble to find more classroom hours to devote to career preparedness and technological changes.

To make those extra hours, we are compressing or dispensing with seemingly less essential studies like grammar, language, and writing. Be clear that AI generators will not improve that trend. Our children’s children will learn less about language propriety than our parents did.

Common usage encompasses what we hear, learn, and say in everyday life and experiences. Especially in today’s world, we are more likely to put stock in common use. We’re bombarded by talking and, to some extent, writing. Television occupies more time in more households than ever before. Radio, podcasts, streaming, print media, books, classes, and social interactions. Yak yak blah blah blah.

Because of that, common usage is compelling. We can’t turn our backs on it. Even I can’t, though I’m horrified when I hear myself sounding like my teenage grandkids. If you want to be a wealthy writer, be clear that language changes, and we are the agents of change, sometimes unintentionally but sometimes very much on purpose.

Changing languages are living languages

Language is a dynamic and evolving system shaped by various social, cultural, and historical influences. If language were static and rigid, amazing writers like John Steinbeck or Zora Hurston would have been hard-pressed to give us the masterpieces they wrote. Here are some key factors that change a language:

1. Language reflects society and culture. Changes in social structures, technology, politics, and contact with other cultures influence language. For example, the introduction of new technologies often leads to the creation of new words or adaptations of existing vocabulary. Consider the word radar. In the 1940s, the US Navy coined it as an acronym for radio detection and ranging.

2. When different languages come into contact with one another, they influence each other through the borrowing of words, phrases, or grammatical structures. This linguistic borrowing occurs when speakers of one language adopt elements from another language. For example, English has borrowed numerous words from French, such as “restaurant” and “ballet.”

3. Pronunciation shifts constantly. Certain sounds may shift or disappear altogether as the phonetic structure of a language evolves.

4. Grammar and syntax, as we see every day, also undergo changes, and that’s key to how language works. Over time, certain grammatical constructions may become more or less common, and new syntactic patterns can emerge. We do this to simplify, regulate, or rethink how we use the language.

5. Meanings of words can change over time, leading to shifts in vocabulary. Words acquire new meanings or lose old meanings. Semantic changes come from cultural shifts, changes in usage, or influences from other languages. For example, Kleenex was once strictly a particular brand of product, but now, worldwide and in many languages, means almost any nose tissue.

6. Maybe the most obvious and frequent language shifts are socially influenced. Age, gender, social class, and education impact language and lead to new vocabulary, expressions, or speech patterns Consider years ago when lots of people latched on to the Valley Girl fad, and we heard the most ridiculous new speech patterns. Or when, a couple of years ago, the majority of white, suburban, middle-class teens glommed onto traditional speech patterns that were once only found in inner city ethnically diverse communities.

7. Official language policies, educational policies, or efforts to standardize a language can lead to intentional changes, such as the adoption of new words or the modification of grammatical rules.

Language change often happens over generations and is usually influenced by a combination of these factors. But never forget that notable dictionaries annually add and subtract words and phrases from English usage. The Global Language Monitor tells us,

“At its current rate, English generates about 14.7 words a day or one every 98 minutes.”

If you want to be a wealthy writer, you’ll need to keep up.

A stunning example of changes as we speak

When media moguls describe a presidential candidate as more friendly, more tall, or more smart than another, my teeth grind. In my world, some rules govern comparatives and superlatives. I fault modern broadcast media for screwing that up and lumping the word “more” in front of any modifier, and I fault all of us for accepting that so that it has become common use.

Listen up, American journalists! Grammar police believe we should have fought this trend. Comparative forms of adjectives compare two or more things (nouns). There are real rules, not options or guidelines, for forming comparatives per The Chicago Manual of Style. Take note!

• If the adjective has one syllable, ends in e , like blue or cute, just tack on an r. (bluer, cuter)

• If the adjective has one syllable, one vowel, and ends in one consonant, like hot or fat, double the end consonant and add er. (hotter, fatter)

• Adjective has multiple vowels within the word or multiple consonants at the end, but one syllable, add er. (brighter, cleaner, brisker)

• Adjective with two syllables ends in y like crappy, whacky, or dumpy, change the y to i and smack on an er. (crappier, whackier)

• Adjective with two or more syllables does not end in y — here it is! NOW you precede the adjective with more but you never add an ending to the word. (more meaningful, more compelling, but never more beautifuller.)

• Superlatives, like whackiest or bluest are formed by the same rules, says the University of Victoria in Canada.

Someone theorized that the trend of pairing every comparative with more came from journalists being paid by the word…and that adds a word to every comparative. Paycheck notwithstanding, I’d rather hear more ers and fewer mores on the nightly news. But I digress…

I’ll admit I am sensitive to traditional language use. I have always worked with language. That doesn’t mean I can’t appreciate the coining of an amazing new word or a unique way of describing something. I’m as flexible as a bendy straw when it comes to innovation, but my old-school upbringing makes language evolution challenging for me.

I find comfort in thinking I can count on some things being constant. Like the way unique means one of a kind, with no peer. Or does it?

How often do we hear that something is fairly unique? Point being, there are few constants. Buddhists will assure you that the only constant is constant change.

Can we determine how and why the -er thing happened?

Sure, we can. Common usage, motivated by social influences, often establishes correctness, even if some of us resist it. “Aren’t I” is an example of common usage, even though it is technically ungrammatical. Another is the acceptance of using a preposition at the end of a sentence.

Specific rules, or their lack, come into question here, too. And if you want to be a wealthy writer, you must know the rules even if you don’t follow them rigidly. We know that some adjectives have built-in acceptable comparative forms, as explained above. So we add er to large if we know the rule. Standard proper English.

However, even cranky grammar enforcers like me know that nowhere in the dictionary will you prove that you are prohibited from adding “more” to adjectives that should be made comparative without it.

A curious tool, Google NGram, allows you to input any term or set of terms and returns a graph indicating how frequently that term appears in works from Google Books. It’s fun. Try it.

I input large, more large, and if I read it correctly, from 1803 to 2018, larger was far more common, perhaps defining it as more acceptable.

Logically, we can deduce that either may be technically correct, but more people opt for larger. If you want to be perceived as a skilled writer and your work to be widely read, you might be better off committing to using the rules of comparatives. Many readers see breaking conventions for no reason as lazy or amateurish.

Shouldn’t capable writers stand above the riffraff?

How do you want your work to be received? You’re taking the time and effort to craft articles, books, or posts people will read. It seems fair to say you’d like a lot of people to read you, and you’d like them to come back for more.

Or maybe you want to create content and sell it consistently. In a nutshell, you want to be a wealthy writer, not a starving artist. That makes all kinds of sense.

If you read as much as you write, and you should, it has to be obvious that many self-described “writers” fail to make time to own their craft. I mean, before you identify as an electrician, you simply have to know about electricity, capacitors, resistance, ohms, tools, and possible electrocution. Once you own all that knowledge and can use it consistently, you get to be known as a decent electrician.

It stands to reason that before you can run roughshod over the rules, conventions, and best practices in writing, you must know what they are. Before you start flinging around clunky comparatives or inventing your own ways to capitalize words, you should probably be able to write a 700-word blog post that flows logically, follows the rules, and reads like the world’s most proper writing.

Then, and only then, can you decide what rules to trample without sounding like you’ve never read or written more than a text to your BFF.

This morning, I pulled up seven new posts so I could support my fellow writers. The first one got two seconds of my time because it had a misspelled, incorrectly capitalized word in the damn title.

Three were riddled with words missing, punctuation mangled, syntax destroyed, and lame rambling arguments.

The other three were delicious. I learned something. The writing didn’t cause me to stop and say, “Are you kidding me?”

The construction was purposeful and within bounds. In order to help them stand above the riffraff, I followed each of the good writers. I clapped (really loudly), and I wrote heartfelt comments. I hope those three writers fill the pages of Medium or Substack and gain a broad readership.

To the three who didn’t care enough to provide a tolerable experience, go rethink your approach. You surely don’t understand how language works or how to be a wealthy writer. Maybe spend some time with the amazing Quick and Dirty Tips website. Maybe turn your interest to electrical work?

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