Grammar fans are added to a movie about participants and gerunds

Jennifer Griffin was sitting outside a cinema on West 23rd Street in Manhattan, waving a friend.

“I’m here with all the other Dorks!” She shouted, using a prepositional phrase to draw Lisa Kuklinski. Soon, Miranda Schwartz, a children’s editor, who wore a shirt that wrote “I correctly correct you” – in particular, the message did not have a punctuation mark at the end.

Women are members of a group chat in which they text each other about the words they find in the bee game in New York Times. This was the night of their girls. “When you find someone as nerd as about the comma from Oxford,” said Mrs. Kuklinski, an actuary, “you can find a lot of other things in common.”

Participated in the first projection in New York in “Rebellious“, A new documentary about a woman who has set up a” grammatical mass “in all 50 states for passers -by to stop and ask her about punctuation and participate from the past.

The star of the film, Ellen Jovin, drives her table from tomorrow to Hawaii and every state between them, distributing precise but not pedantic lessons, involving in a kind of face-to-face with strangers who are so absent from contemporary daily life.

At this week’s projection, over 450 grammar enthusiasts (the average age passed in the early-mearp-membership range) came to celebrate a “rebellious with a clause”, which was directed by Mrs. Jovin’s husband, Brandt Johnson.

Before and after the projection, the films were prevented if they would place a comma after the penultimate article in a list, discussed the proper use of “lie” and “lay” and united in a common reverence for language, ideas and grammatical rules meant to provide clarity to free expression.

Mrs. Jovin greeted the members of the public and guided her to stacks of worksheets with the “non -mandatory grammatical test” she created. (Question sample: “What is the square root of the number of letters from the speech part which is” punctilious “?”)

He wore a shirt with rhinestones that wrote “Grammar is Groovy”, which he ordered online at the last moment. “All my other grammatical clothes are not elegant enough,” she said.

A writer and writing instructor who studied about 25 languages, Mrs. Jovin first exposed the grammar meal On the streets of New York in 2018. Since then, she wrote a book, also called a “rebellion with a clause”, which was published in 2022.

Mr. Johnson, a former 6-meter pro-6-6-meter basketball player, remained against the crowd. He said that while he witnessed the “humor and humanity” at the grammatical table, he was moved to surprise him on the film. “I saw the fun and connections,” he said. “I felt like a beautiful thing I wanted to share with the world.”

The theater was filled with strangers and friends. Lloyd Rotker and his wife, Judith, had once seen Mrs. Jovin talking about a library. “I am very worried about grammar,” said Mr. Rotker. “As we lose interest and skills in the grammar, we lose clarity in language and, finally, in thought.”

Mrs. Rotker said it is not as grammar as her husband, but that she has not often corrected it. “That’s why we are still married,” he said. She nodded. (The 51st anniversary of them is later this month.)

Situable in front of the theater were Janice and Korey Klostermeier, former neighbors of Mrs. Jovin and Mr. Johnson. They entered Miami Beach.

“I like a good grammar,” said Mrs. Klostermeier, who added quickly, “this is Ol-Apostrophe.”

The joy between grammar lovers was occasionally tempered by the concern for choosing words.

“Can I strain?” Taylor Mali, a poet, asked the people who were sitting on a corridor as they slipped next to them to a chair in the center of their row.

“You MayOne of them replied.

Mr. Mali sighed as he told the exchange. “Of all the places,” he said, with his head hanging down.

The film opens with an animated discussion in the declacement, Ala., Between Mrs. Jovin and two men who could or may not have spent a few hours in a bar before getting closer to her grammar table. They wanted her to weigh at the proper placement of the apostrophe in “y’all”.

The film then takes the spectators in Mrs. Jovin’s road trip to Detroit; Salt Lake City; Little Rock, Ark.; and beyond. She and Mr. Johnson set up a table covered with dictionaries and manuals and are waiting for questions.

The action is easy and easy. In a few moments, the audience laughed. When Mrs. Jovin confessed her love for diagram sentences, the crowd broke out in applause.

The film also offers cases of surprise, even for some who are considered grammatically sharpened. On several occasions, Mrs. Jovin clarifies a misconception about the conclusion of a sentence with a preposition.

Doing this is actually perfectly correct, explains Mrs. Jovin. “It is a grammatical myth that has made its way into English through Latin, but English is a German language,” she says for a meal visitor who responds with a “shut up!

The members of the public filtered in the hall afterwards, checking news on their phones. While watching a language centered on language and civil discussions, President Trump held a sometimes inflammatory speech, during which he confronted with politicians who are silent with signs, others moaning and humming, and a representative, the representative of Green, who was thrown.

Croenosity of the movie message did not lose Kathryn Szoka, who owns the canio books in Sag Harbor, NY

“She talks to people, including many who probably have very different views from her,” said Mrs. Szoka about Mrs. Jovin. “These are respectful and trained conversations around our common values ​​and serve as an illustration of how art and language bring us together.”