[WikiEN-l] Horrible Grammar

[Tony Sidaway]

On 11/10/05, Freya <cybercat at redjellyfish.net> wrote:
> We need a committee to check the grammar in Wikipedia articles and
> make corrections! We need some really picky people on this committee
> too - and I will be glad to help.
>

English grammar is very flexible, so if you find something that
doesn't look right to you it's probably better to fix it yourself--if
it's really that important to you--than to hope for some committee to
come up with the One True Wikipedia Grammar (which is feasible) and
impose it on all of Wikipedia (which is a bit pie-in-the-sky).

The other day someone came on IRC moaning about the use of "which" in
nonrestrictive clauses, which is apparently a heinous crime in
American English but perfectly acceptable (and even sometimes
prefered) in most other forms.  My take on this--as with most style
questions--is that we have thousands, of regular editors, and while
it's nice to have stuff like our Manual of style, and Strunk and
White, Fowler, etc as guides, we will probably have to permit our
normal editing processes to take care of the question of grammar.  We
have enough silly edit wars about whether or not to use emdashes and
whatnot. A crusade on the nonrestrictive clause would not be of much
use to Wikipedia if it drove away good people, as such battles
invariably do.