Nusa Dua coast with breakwater, Bali, Indonesia

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The most wonderful day of the year. Period.

Er, comma—at least it seems like that's what we're seeing. And just like a comma breaks up a sentence, this structure called a breakwater interrupts the Pacific Ocean, punctuating waves with a crash before they can disturb this Bali beach. Whether its resemblance to a comma (or is that an apostrophe?) was intentional or not, it's a fine visual for today's syntactical celebration. That's correct: It's Grammar Day!

If you're not inclined to decline verbs or dying to diagram a sentence, don't quit reading just yet. You might just think of grammar as the dos and don'ts taught in English textbooks — but a mere stuffy set of rules it ain't. Grammar is the ingredients of a language. Whenever we speak or even think, whether with prim-and-proper diction or in the most teacher-defying slang, our brains are using grammatical rules to translate firing neurons into words and phrases. Just how this happens is still a hot debate for linguists. Whatever the reason may be, today is the day when it's perfectly acceptable to be something of a “grammar Nazi.”