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When people ask me why I don’t know a foreign language, I try to explain to them that I know English at least twice as well as a normal person, and that’s why I don’t feel like I really need to know another language. I don’t mean this in a braggy, self-righteous way. I mean this in a factual way. I know English because it is my job to know English. I am a professional writer/editor. This is basically the only requirement of my job.

I don’t know this stuff just so I can whip it out at parties and give people crap about their inability to use punctuation. I don’t know it just to look smart. I know it for a practical reason: people pay me to know it. People don’t accuse carpenters of being self-righteous about their knowledge of saws. Pilots don’t get an eye-roll when they talk aerodynamics or yaw. You don’t mock your doctor because he knows the difference between your ilium and your olecranon.

So stop thinking I’m a jerky snob for knowing how to use a semicolon. Or when you capitalize East Coast. Or when to use bad instead of badly, or less than instead of fewer than.