摘要：One of the biggest and most frustrating divides between writing studies faculty and professors from other disciplines concerns grammar instruction. Many if not all of us in writing across the curriculum (WAC) and/or writing studies have at least one story of encountering an outside colleague (or an upper administrator) and being harangued about the abominable state of student grammar knowledge. The aggrieved colleague might invoke a Golden Age (perhaps when he was an undergraduate) when student writing was not so alarmingly bad. The colleague might also credit her arriving at a successful academic career in part to the hard–nosed grammar mavenry of a past teacher. We try to respond; we offer things about non–expert prose, unfamiliar genres, and the complex interplay between grammar and rhetoric; in other words, we offer elevator–ride versions of Hartwell, Bartholomae, and Joseph Willliams. We might even follow up by emailing the colleague a link to the National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE) web page entitled “Questions and Answers about Grammar.”
