Grammar Police

A few weeks ago, a friend of mine was discussing the police corruption in Jordan. She said, "the cops are corrupt." I heard, "the cops are correct." I hoped that she meant grammatically correct, and was encouraged by the idea that the Jordanian police force considered bad grammar* a crime worth policing; I felt it was an acknowledgment that theft and dangling modifiers can perpetuate the same level of chaos in a society.

The police are meant to maintain order on every level. Take the international police organization known as Interpol. They prevent and investigate large-scale crimes such as terrorism, human trafficking and war crimes. They also prevent me from duplicating my Flashdance VHS.

I would guess that the Orange County police force deals mostly with minor crimes such as reckless driving, shoplifting, and disorderly conduct. They could easily increase their list of misdemeanors to include improper use of the semicolon or confusion of the spellings of their, there and they're. Legally changing grammar mistakes into grammar crimes would legitimize the problems caused by sloppy grammar, and I could plead self-defense when I murder someone for replacing adverbs with adjectives and saying things like, "You did excellent," or "You sing great."

*When I say grammar, I also mean spelling and punctuation.