Is the Internet Destroying Our Ability to Use Correct Grammar?

Language changes right along with culture. Every anthropologist, linguist, and word-watcher knows this. And grammar changes too, especially among "in-groups" who use their own dialects. But does basic good grammar have to be dropped by the wayside?

I know I get pedantic about this subject, and I should probably have a "grammar police" badge in my pocket. I don't have the right to criticize others for "not following the rules" in their writing. And yet, and yet..... As someone who spent much of her life writing for a living, seeing horrendous basic errors, done because the writer didn't know better, not deliberately to signal a folksy style, just causes me pain. Maybe I taught English for too many years; maybe I've read too many books on writing or on style, but the fact remains that I want to take a red pen and correct much of what I read.

Here are a few examples.

Verb Tense

People seem to forget, once they get out of English 101, that English has more than one way of expressing events that occurred in the past, the present, or the future. This happens most often with irregular verbs such as "to go" or "to be" than with regular ones, but it happens with alarming regularity.

There are three common past tenses: simple past, past imperfect, and past perfect. The simple past expresses a single action that took place in the past, uses the verb alone, without any "helper verbs" (the term most likely to be recognized by those who didn't take advanced grammar, which bores most people). An example using an irregular verb: I ATE dinner last night. An example using a regular verb: She WALKED her dog last night.

The past imperfect signifies action that has taken place in the past but which may be on-going, or may happen again, and uses a form of the verb "to have" as a "helper." An example using an irregular verb: I HAVE GONE to that restaurant many times, and HAVE EATEN their food. An example using a regular verb: SHE HAS WALKED her dog every night this week. Another variant of the imperfect uses the verb "to be" as its auxiliary. "WERE you going to school in 1995?" "Yes, I WAS GOING then."