Grammar or Style my reply to a Linkedin piece

I was probably the last person in England to be taught grammar, early 1970s. It is rare for it to be taught now, but Google away and contradict me.

Grammar is scaffolding for language, just as gossip is the glue that binds communities together.

People who are fixated about grammar etc, are stupid as New Yorkers might say. Its the message

that matters, sure if the words are so badly written that nobody can understand that does matter.

Its very American to go on courses to learn how to write or go to Journalism School for 4 years.

I'd say don't waste your time. 

Me I listened to BBC Radio4 for 20 years before I picked up a pen, its speech radio with drama,news and so on. So from 10 to 30 I must have heard thousands of plays and so on. Then when I picked up a pen nearly 25 years ago I had a good start, but it still took me a year of trying before I said to myself, I can write.

Style you either have or don't have, you can steal somebody elses or over analyse every book you have ever read. My own experience of Eng Lit is that it kills what you should be reading.

enjoy the book first and then think why you loved it afterwards. If the passion is there, then  make love, don't ring your priest first, just make love. English should be such  a passion, I'm told I have a good style, I hope because its funny, but you cannot analyse a joke, its either funny or its isn't. Humour does depend on the delivery, its the way I tell them was what one  great Northern Irish comedian said.  A favourite uncle only has to purse his lips and we all start to smile, then when he says something we are in stitches. I know from my hotel experience  at CPNEC I could raise a laugh, why, because I was practicing all day every day 12 hours a day, with such practice I had to be good. Just as a singer practices and reaches her peak, so does a writer. Bad style or bad writer, say like Dan Brown, can kill enjoyment so you cannot read more than a page, yet we are all different, some people think Dan Brown is great, I do not. I'll leave you with that thought. My stuff is on www.michaelgcasey.multiply.com and The Butcher The Baker and The Undertaker my lead book is on Amazon Kindle with 3 other books of mine, just look for my face of the covers.