Grammar Day was March 4 this year. I always abstain from the annual Grammar Day celebrations, and all of my friends know why: I think grammar is bogus.

Grammar rules and terminology rarely help with a writing problem – quite the opposite, in fact: grammar often leads to confusion.

Monday’s New York Times is a good example. The news summary on the front page featured this sentence:

Angry over blackouts and rising electricity bills, a small but growing number of Californians is going off the grid.

Obviously “a number” requires a singular verb – is. Except that in this case it doesn’t. The actual article got it right:

Angry over blackouts, wildfires caused by utilities and rising electricity bills, a small but growing number of Californians in rural areas and in the suburbs of San Francisco are going off the grid.

In English a number is plural, but the number is singular.

A number of Californians are going off the grid.  (are is plural)

The number of members keeps dropping.  (keeps is singular)

Grammar – as I said earlier – is bogus. It’s not a set of guardrails to keep you from making a mistake. Instead it’s an attempt to explain – in fancy language – what the English language is doing. The language always comes first, and then grammarians rush in to try to explain what’s happening.

Often that process doesn’t work the way it’s supposed to. Grammarians may have to do some fudging to come up with a plausible rule to explain the crazy usages that have found their way into English.

But if you can’t rely on grammar rules, how can you be sure you’re writing correctly? Luckily there are some common-sense answers.

For starters, you can do what I’ve done (and continue to do): read some good books about English usage. I highly recommend Theodore Bernstein’s books, for example.

(Did you notice that I said usage rather than grammar? Usage does not claim to be a divinely inspired answer to our questions about language. It deals with language problems in a practical way: how do today’s educated speakers handle a particular issue?)

Another strategy is to make sure you have as much experience with English (preferably good English) as possible, especially if you’re an international learner. Read! Watch TV! Talk with a native speaker!

And you can make a resolution that you’ll always, always have someone look over your writing before you submit or post it.