Happy National Grammar Day!

I’m a stickler for grammar. My kids can’t stand it. Grammar, though, is natural language syntax. It’s key for clear communication with other humans and LLMs.

So I was excited to see this day show up on the calendar. In this map, many grammatical differences based on state dialects are presented and categorized. These were created with Google Gemini, and I have to say some don’t appear to be in the correct states. The Minnesota example, for instance, is literally a Pennsylvania example.

So what did I learn from this? Google Gemini is still subpar at creating datasets from the web compared to my ChatGPT assistant or Perplexity Pro. Sample size of 2 now, but it just isn’t as robust for me.

But I’m keeping its results, because all of the examples are realistic and definitely American dialect fudgings of grammar. And this whole daily map thing is truly just a meta-experiment about prompt cartography — and an attempt to highlight the absurdity of many declared days.

If you know an English Language Arts teacher or have connected with your former ones on social media, consider sending them a note today to say that you appreciate them, and you are grateful that they taught you the rules of English grammar… so that you can break them! 🙂

View Grammar Police Crime Incident Map

LLM Tools

Dataset: Google Gemini (geographically subpar but overall it works)

Map creation: WebMapGPT

Original Prompt

Hi, I want to make a map for National Grammar Day on March 4, 2026. I came up with a list of different dialect expressions, state-by-state. (It’s not authoritative, but it’s something.) You can credit Google Gemini for creating the list in the sources. The CSV is attached here. I would like you to add a column to it categorizing (you will have to come up with some categories) what part of the grammar is different from normal in the state-based expression (e.g., noun-verb exchange, missing verb, unique adjective, etc.). The column can contain as many categories as is relevant based on the sample sentence. Try to limit the categorization of all variation across the map it to 4-7 different groups. Then, for each feature, I would like you to add an additional field with one of those categories: the most significant or pronounced difference from standard/official/high American English grammar. Which one of those issues is most prominent. The states should be color coded using a Color Brewer categorical color scheme based on the most prominent grammatical variation category you chose for that state. Then make a US map (with Alaska and Hawaii in the main window in the lower left that shows each state, in each color. Place a title at the top that reads: “Grammar Police Crime Incident Map.” No subtitle. An interactive legend should be in the lower right and minimizable so Florida can be viewed easily. It should minimize when the user clicks on the header and maximize when they do so as well. Legend title should read: “Violation Types” and list the categories with their associated colors. Users should be able to (multi-select) violations in the legend to filter (show) states with those violations as the prominent ones. By clicking on those categories again, they become unfiltered. Please add a “Show All” button at the button of the legend, minimized in the legend’s visual hierarchy that shows all the states as they were too if people get confused. Near the bottom of the legend, tucked in stylishly, please place a small, subtle “Sources” button that will open a sources Modal. MAKE CERTAIN the modal is closed when the map is first loaded and that clicking outside of the sources modal at any point will close it automatically. The map should be minimalist and have a very light gray background body color behind the map. Avoide a separate header bar format and instead just leave space for the title to be in the upper left and predominant. Perhaps the title can be in an instructor’s chalk font or a bright red (like a grammar police person’s pen markings) pen font. Use Google fonts to make the map fun and modern. Choose a Color Brewer color scheme that fits the “police” or “education” motif. Neither too gaudy nor too pastel please. If none exists, improvise to make the map vibe and aesthetic work and the categories still easily discernible. Finally, the info windows should do the following. When a user clicks on a state, please have an info window pop up with the state name as the header, the most common grammatical offense underneath (in the color that it is in the legend). Then, format it so it’s easily legible (not too small and styled) the example quote that is wrong. Then underneat, also styled, have a translation. At the bottom, have a list of all the grammatical issues identified with the statement from the other field, each’s font colored accordingly to the category it represents. No need for source information in the info window, we will add this to the sources tab. For mobile devices, please do not show the map unless the device is rotated to landscape mode. Thank you! Please let me know if you have any questions or if something I wrote is not clear enough. I appreciate it!