We don't need no education;
We don't need no thought control,
No dark sarcasm in the classroom.
Teacher, leave those kids alone.

Pink Floyd released "Another Brick in the Wall" almost 30 years ago, and we're still singing along--despite a few cranks who wanted to ban the song for what they insisted was its "bad grammar."

Well, poppycock. Hooey. Balderdash!

Ever ironic, Pink Floyd lyricist Roger Waters was, of course, imitating the voices of disaffected teens in the 1970s. Or, as a linguist might put it, Waters was mimicking "the casual register" of those young people.

In language studies, register refers to a variety of English (or a subset of any language) used for a particular purpose or in a particular social setting. And in the setting of The Wall, the double negative was (and still is) exactly the right register.

Now, the purpose of this Grammar & Composition site is certainly not to recommend the use of bad grammar--casual or otherwise. On the contrary, the guidelines and examples on these pages focus on what's variously called "standard" or "educated" or "formal" English--the sort of good writing that your instructors expect from you.

But that doesn't mean that all of the rules of writing apply in exactly the same way in all situations. When it comes to lyrics, for instance, songwriters have been bending and breaking and generally ignoring the rules for a long, long time.

All the same, there's absolutely no excuse for a line as bad as this one from Justin Hawkins in the song "Hazel Eyes": "I've never seen a set of eyes look more hazelerer."

So it turns out that in a glam-metal band there is one thing worse than bagpipes: the grammar.