English grammar and spelling are like manners and customs. There is no single "right" way to be polite but there are things that are commonly accepted by most p

English grammar and spelling are like manners and customs. There is no single "right" way to be polite but there are things that are commonly accepted by most people to be impolite and therefore "wrong." It can be hard and confusing. I have a phd in the humanities and I still find myself questioning my grammar or struggling to explain why something a student wrote in a paper is wrong. (I usually fall back on things like "this is unclear" and "it would be more elegant to write something like this..." But like manners or even music, once you have internalized the "rules" you know when you can break them and when you can't. Would it be better to have a single official standard English? Maybe but good luck getting all the English-speaking countries to agree on that.