Relax, let's just talk.

Over the years, I've gained quite the reputation as a stickler on grammar. I have bolstered that reputation by using my blog to rail on such things as misplaced apostrophes, typos and commonly confused words.

Sadly, friends express self consciousness in their emails and in conversations with me--no matter how much I insist that mistakes don't bother me a bit in casual communication and that I make grammatical missteps too (seriously, I do).

I often ask for help from two people who know more grammar than me (the same two people who knew automatically that I should have said they "know more grammar than I"). And I also start sentences with and, but and because. I stubbornly leave out commas and end sentences in prepositions. And sentence fragments? I love 'em.

So relax--no need to walk on grammatical eggshells around me.

With that said, if you start writing for the Dining and Wine section of the New York Times and say that the third coarse had too much course salt or that the red potatoes were heavy on the time and didn't come out in a reasonable thyme, I will make an example out of you.