Grammar Ghosts

Linguistics tomorrow. The subject I seem to be able to do very well in just by doing nothing. But it's a trap you see, because just as I think I'm flying through the valley of death, avoiding and not seeing all evil, I find my fuel tank will probably cut short, drop me down, and I'll be stuck in the midst of a clan of hobgoblins, all after my grammar-blood.

Grammar-blood I figure is that thing which makes people type properly on the internet. There are a lot of people who seem to have their grammar-blood drawn out, or they'll injure themselves and some incompetant doctor will let it flow out into the void. See... without this blood you tend to overuse ellipses...commas,...sometimesmiss, spaces...,oryoumiss... capitalsorperiodsi am, demonstrating... somethinglike it, right now. dontforget loss of apostraphes, ,doublepunctuation..., orspelingmisteaks,,...soiand u fin'tard,,2readit.

And when people have their grammar-blood bled out, they are grammatically dead. No one can talk to them on the internet and they go off to their own little grammar hell. Occasionally little, scared boys will call on one of them, "I see grammar-dead people, they're everywhere, and they don't know they're dead."

I figure there must be a few ways people become grammar-dead. It's a dangerous affair, being on the internet and using text messages. Hundreds of grammar-ghosts haunt the digital netstreams, trying as hard as they can to assault other's senses with their horrible writing! And sometimes they manage to kill someone with it. Constant stab wounds from their words bleed us all dry.

The dead haunt us still, but some of them have always been that way. Some writers are stillborn, never having known better. Some of them succumb to the constant lolmgxxx!!1one's. And some of them fall victim to the grammar-vampyres. These undead grammarians come out at night and flood the forums, blogs and chatboxes, sucking dry the hopes of us grammar literate. They are characterised by their sneaky ways of beginning with moderately competant grammar, then slowly getting worse and worse. Pretty soon they'll need a victim, so they find someone, chat with them, slowly suck them dry. Then when the victim is completely grammar illiterate, they disappear to another forum, using the temporary burst of grammar-blood to entrap another. You can spot them by looking for misplaced commas, or by trying to make one attachment on a single forum and only hanging onto them. If you become that victim, get your grammar stakes and shovels and get them through the heart, then bury them. Avoid at all costs.

The worst thing that can happen is that they will feed you some of their grammar-blood and you will turn into them.

But there is a small group of elites, holding off against the hoardes of grammar-ghosts. There are a few strongholds left, but each is under assault. The few who go out on forays for supplies never return, but we hold onto a hope: a hope that once all food and grammar has disappeared from this world, we will re-emerge and reclaim the world.