I’ve studied English grammar for years in school, and it seems like there are just too many rules. Why?
One thing that might help would be to think of rules as conventions that we all use so that we can understand one another better. We are surrounded by conventions that we really don’t even have to think about anymore; they are that common. Take, for example, traffic signals. When drivers see a red light, they know they are supposed to stop. They do not have to look up that rule in the driver’s manual every time they see a red light; they have done it so often that it is like second nature. The more you write, the more those rules will become like second nature, too.
