GRAMMAR
BY L. RON HUBBARD
L. Ron Hubbard offered the following explanation of grammar, its history and its function as an introduction to his highly acclaimed textbook The New Grammar, part of the Key to Life Course.
Grammar is the way words are organized into speech and writings so as to convey exact thoughts, ideas and meanings amongst people. It is essentially a system of agreements as to the relationship of words to bring about meaningful communication.
That is all that grammar is. If it is defined otherwise, students will think they are being taught classroom rules rather than how to talk and read.
This definition will not be found in dictionaries because grammar fell into the hands of grammarians who themselves misunderstood the word grammar. It is that and that only which makes grammar tough. The objective of The New Grammar is to bypass the resulting complications.
Grammar is established by common usage and forwarded by writers. It got into a very dark eddy of a very dark river when it fell into the hands of the professors. This is basically what is wrong with it. It isn’t even difficult to understand it. It is only difficult to understand the inability of the professors to write about it.
Grammar isn’t the study of anything. It’s the use of something. Now a “professor” believes that anything is a study. That’s because he gets paid for telling people it is a study. Grammar is a part of everyday existence and if you don’t know it and can’t use it, nobody can understand you and you can’t understand others and you will be in mystery about things and people a lot of the time.
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