If you know me personally, you know this about me: I am a passionate rule-follower. (I can see some of you rolling your eyes: yep, that’s Jeannette.) It’s ingrained in me for several reasons—mostly, though, because it creates community norms that allow people to protect each other. You can’t disturb your neighbor by playing the bagpipes at midnight. There’s a fine if you throw garbage on the street.

Mostly, though, people wiser than me have found that certain things just work. Enter the museum by this door. Wait your turn in line at that shop. Following these rules shows respect both for everyone around you, but also for the wisdom of those who thought through the best way to do things.

Which brings us to the rules attached to grammar and usage. Over the years I’ve worked with myriad students and clients whose first impulse is to call on literary license, to write something the way they want to write it, rules be damned. And it’s true that sometimes literary/poetic license is indeed the best way to express an idea, a feeling, a situation. I read works by others far more skilled than I am and am amazed by their interpretation, their transcendence.

I am all for this kind of brilliance. It makes the reader sit up and take notice. It leaves us with images that are crisp and generous and memorable. But I have yet to see one of these emerge from the writing of someone who clearly hasn’t been thoughtful about why they’re doing it.

When we write, our first goal has to be communication. A beautiful stanza or paragraph doesn’t do much unless it leads the reader to understanding along with experiencing beauty. Perhaps the key is to find a balance—a willingness to respect a rule, but also a healthy curiosity as to its continuing purpose and an examination of its greater aim. Rules teach us something: what is it? Once we have that insight, we can either follow the rule more confidently, or bend or break it at appropriate times.

But essential to any of these options is an understanding of both the rule’s original intent and its current application; in comparing these two aspects, we can proceed with genuine wisdom.

People who know how to creatively break the rules also know why the rules were there in the first place. They are not mere iconoclasts or rebels. (Richard Rohr)

We should all try our best to understand the rules, their necessity, their sacredness, the chaos they keep at bay, how they unite the community that follows them, the price paid for their establishment, and the danger of breaking them.

But we should also be willing to fully shoulder the responsibility of making an exception when it serves a higher good.

Learn rules like a pro, so that you can break them like an artist. (Picasso)

There is an existential dilemma within our existence. It’s necessary to conform, to be disciplined and to follow the rules, to do humbly what others do; but it’s also necessary to use judgment, vision, and truth to tell what is right when the rules suggest otherwise.

And then there’s the Internet.

The “accepted” rule is that the internet makes us anonymous. It’s easy to sit in the dark and think that no one can see us. Our computers, we believe, are masks that keep us from having responsibility over what we post. Here’s a rule: If you wouldn’t say a thing to someone’s face, don’t say it to Facebook either. Be considerate of the tone of the emails you send. If you wouldn’t do it or say it offline, then don’t do it or say it online.

Social media makes you all way too comfortable with disrespecting people and not getting punched in the face for it. (Mike Tyson)

There’s no reason for that to happen. Some rules—treat people the way you would like them to treat you—are largely universal and have few excuses for violation. Others may work for a given time and in a given place.

What they all have in common is this: they didn’t fall from heaven in a plastic bag. They were thought through, honed, experimented with, and finally applied. We can respect that by doing the same when we consider violating them.

So learn the rules—all the rules. Understand what strengths you can draw from them, what communication they facilitate, perhaps even the reasons they were instituted. And then, as an exception, choose not to follow one or the other. But be prepared to explain why. Because a writer like myself will always ask the question.

Know Them Before You Break Them

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