Toastmasters International -For the Love of Language

Illustration by Jerry King

We open today with a quiz question. The topic: grammar. Dull and excruciating, or challenging and exciting?

My vote is for the latter. This may not come as a surprise, given my career as an editor. And, okay, “exciting” may be a bit of stretch. But it is ... stimulating. In the same way that, say, a puzzle is. You rack your brain to find those last pieces of the puzzle on the table. You exult when you find the right fit. That’s grammar at its essence: finding the right pieces to fit your sentence.

As for grammar being dull and dry, have you ever witnessed a group of editors debating the merits of the Oxford comma? Or grappling over the use, or abuse, of semicolons? It’s not pretty.

Grammar is indeed complicated and crazy-making at times. I’ve spent countless hours scouring grammar stylebooks, searching for edicts on comma placement, the correct tenses of “lie” (lie, lay, lain, lying … whew!), and answers to the eternal question: to hyphenate or not to hyphenate?

Which brings me to National Grammar Day. It is held annually on March 4. (Why that day? Sound out the date and you get a declarative sentence: March forth.) Established in 2008 by author and teacher Martha Brockenbrough, it’s a day to “celebrate good grammar in both our written and spoken communication.” The “national” in the name refers to the United States, but certainly any country can join in the fun; after all, grammar is universally relevant.

Toastmasters know that. That’s why we have the grammarian role. The grammarian points out positive examples of language use as well as suggested areas of improvement. Good grammar makes our words and meanings clear, and as speakers, we always want our message to be understood.

If grammar provides the rules for language use, poetry supplies its music.

At this month’s club meetings, especially if you meet on or around March 4, give some extra love to language use. I’m not talking about passing out worksheets—no need to trigger nightmares of diagramming sentences in school. But perhaps the Toastmaster of the Day could offer some language-related humor, or fun facts (“e” is the most frequently used letter in English!), or the grammarian could talk about common grammar mistakes and offer a particularly lively Word of the Day.

Like an endangered species, good grammar has groups dedicated to its preservation: the Apostrophe Protection Society, the Society for the Promotion of Good Grammar, and the Society for the Preservation of the Oxford Comma. (I told you people are passionate about this punctuation mark.)

If grammar provides the rules for language use, poetry supplies its music. There’s a day in March dedicated to that too: World Poetry Day, on March 21. This event was started in 1999 by the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO).

Poetry is a rich source for Toastmasters. It reflects the rhythms, beats, and sparkling imagery of language. Reading or writing poems can help us enliven our speechwriting, and quoting a pertinent poem in a speech is a strong way to make a point.

Consider these evocative lines from “All That’s Past” by English poet Walter de la Mare.

Very old are the woods;

And the buds that break

Out of the brier’s boughs,

When March winds wake,

So old with their beauty are ...

Some clubs even incorporate literature with the meeting role of Poetmaster. This person often opens a meeting by reading a piece of verse—theirs or someone else’s. It starts the session on a reflective note.

On March 21, take a plunge into the realm of poetry. Open your imagination to the work of poets around the world, including Tracy K. Smith, Anna Akhmatova, Pablo Neruda, Indran Amirthanayagam, Emily Dickinson, Billy Collins, Chinua Achebe, and so many more.

As poet Aine O’Neill, a Toastmaster in Dublin, Ireland, wrote in a 2022 Toastmaster article on poetry, “Poems sharpen our senses, put words on our emotions, and help us savor the world through the light of the poet’s eyes.”