National Grammar Day: Virginia Students Think It's Very Important

VIRGINIA — It's generally considered rude to correct the grammar of others. Unless someone is a language teacher, grammar lessons in general conversation are viewed by many people as not acceptable.

That doesn’t mean the idiosyncrasies of the English language should not be studied or even celebrated.

March 4, also known as National Grammar Day, is the perfect day to celebrate good grammar. Students young and old can use the day to study up on some of the most common grammar mistakes.

In the lead-up to National Grammar Day, online learning platform Brainly surveyed 1,700 high school students nationwide to learn about the most common grammar mistakes, their opinions on controversial grammar-related topics and more.

What Brainly discovered is that more students in Virginia than in any other state believe having good grammar is very important. Based on the survey, the top 5 states where students said they think having good grammar is very important are:

• Virginia (68 percent)
• Pennsylvania (62 percent)
• Massachusetts (59 percent)
• Indiana (57 percent)
• Connecticut (53 percent)

The exact question that was asked was: "How important do you think it is for people to have good grammar?" The three answers that students had to choose from were: not important, somewhat important and very important.

By a fairly wide margin over other states, more students in Virginia answered that having good grammar is “very important.”

The survey doesn’t necessarily mean students in Virginia like to correct the grammar of their peers or believe grammar should be policed. They may simply believe good grammar makes for better communication.

Brainly used a third-party polling platform to survey the 1,700 U.S. high school students ages 14-18 enrolled in public high school grades nine through 12. The students surveyed were a random representative sample in terms of geography, demographics and socioeconomic status, and the margin of error was about 3 percent.

“While grammar can be a common source of stress for both students and parents alike, it’s an important subject for people to master, so kids are able to express themselves and their ideas effectively,” said Patrick Quinn, Brainly’s parenting expert.

Brainly also found in its survey that 53 percent of U.S. high school students said bad grammar is a "dating deal-breaker." Also, in a finding that may not sit well with some, 66 percent of students said they prefer a writing style that uses the Oxford comma.

About 43 percent of students said their most common grammar mistake is not knowing when to use a comma.

According to the survey, the top 5 spelling errors that students said they see their peers make most often are:

• They’re/their/there (32 percent)
• It’s/its (24 percent)
• Your/you’re (19 percent)
• Too/to (13 percent)
• Who/whom (12 percent)

“One way for parents to encourage kids to learn good grammar habits is to review their written assignments before they turn them in, so they can be made aware of any errors and learn how to fix them,” Quinn said.

On National Grammar Day, people can visit Brainly's website to practice their grammar skills.