Contrary to popular belief, there are three types of people in the world.

There are those who view grammar as a fly—always whining in ears, always vaguely annoying, but ultimately harmless.

There are those who hate grammar so much that they are perfectly willing to change their names, dye their hair, and flee the country, seeking refuge in a foreign language on some forgotten island where there is no grammar in clicks, squeals, and grunts. (If grammar were a fly, they would swat it, hard.)

And then there are people like me.

Saying that we like grammar is an understatement. We are fascinated by it. We understand and revel in the elusive beauty of the oxford comma, the “em” dash, the semi-colon. We cry tears of rapture when authors employ sentence variety. In casual conversation, we correct dangling prepositions. We own a lot of red pens.

Unfortunately, we’re of a small percentile, and it’s steadily declining with the efficiency of Atlantis sinking beneath the ocean. We are being swiftly swatted by the grammar-haters and the grammar-apathetic. Why? Why now?

It could be attributed to many things, including, but not limited to: national laziness; an overwhelming desire to be illiterate and incomprehensible; something in the water. More likely, though, the ever-growing presence of technology and the media is to blame. With Facebook and Twitter, you get less than 200 characters in which to say something witty and profound. Over-tanned and under-educated celebrities flaunt fist pumps and profanities instead of figure of speeches and premodifiers. As a nation, perhaps, we’re focused on what we say and not how we’re saying it—which would be perfectly fine, if everything we said could be understood.

The .0001% of us who are grammar gurus are ready to make a change one Facebook status, one hilariously incorrect McDonalds sign, one slurred Snooki statement at a time. We don’t expect you to join us; you might even be fighting against us. Still, poor grammar’s reign of terror upon everyday American life is about to come to an end.