grammatical correctness

Following language rules

Grammatical correctness is adherence to the rules of grammar in a given language—proper verb agreement, pronoun case, sentence structure, and the like.

The term often appears in discussions of writing standards or language instruction: The essay was marked down for grammatical correctness.

What counts as correct varies by context; formal writing demands stricter adherence than casual speech.

wordLinguistic meaning unit
sentence structureWord arrangement in clauses
sentenceComplete thought, grammatically
word orderSentence structure pattern
commaPunctuation marking pauses

conjugation · inflection · active voice · subject-verb agreement · noun phrase · verb tense · prefixes · suffixes · derivation · clauses · modifiers · pluralization · phrases · run-on sentence · parallelism · double negative · punctuation · misplaced comma

Opposites

adherence to grammatical rules

grammatical correctnessgrammatical error

Incorrect language structure

sentence fragments · run-on sentences · dangling modifiers

linguistic normativity

grammatical correctnessslang

Informal in-group vocabulary

language competence

grammatical correctnessilliteracy

Inability to read

incoherence · word salad · aphasia · pidgin

Family

grammatical, grammar, grammarian, grammars, grammatically, ungrammatical, correct, correctly, incorrect

Familiarity: Top 200,000
Profile: Used worldwide · Timeless · Abstract · Rated G