False purpose is a grammatical construct that inaccurately applies intent[citation needed] to an action. The construct nearly always arises because of the incorrect[citation needed] use of the infinitival marker "to" in front of a verb describing an action in the past.[citation needed] False purpose is considered an error by many grammarians[who?], though it is commonly found in American sportswriting.[citation needed] An example from baseball: "Adam doubled twice to knock in four runs for Saratoga." The use of false purpose is regarded as an error in this example because it incorrectly suggests that Adam's intent in hitting two doubles was to drive in precisely four runs, when in fact his four runs-batted-in are simply a cumulative effect of his general efforts to accumulate hits and runs for his team. The error is easily corrected: "Adam doubled twice and knocked in four runs for Saratoga."

In linguistics, grammar is the set of structural rules that governs the composition of clauses, phrases, and words in any given natural language. The term refers also to the study of such rules, and this field includes morphology, syntax, and phonology, often complemented by phonetics, semantics, and pragmatics. Linguists do not normally use the term to refer to orthographical rules, although usage books and style guides that call themselves grammars may also refer to spelling and punctuation The term grammar is often used by non-linguists with a very broad meaning. As Jeremy Butterfield puts it: "Grammar is often a generic way of referring to any aspect of English that people object to."[1] However, linguists use it in a much more specific sense. Speakers of a language have in their heads a set of rules[2] for using that language. This is a grammar, and the vast majority of the information in it is acquired—at least in the case of one's native language—not by conscious study or instruction, but by observing other speakers; much of this work is done during infancy. Learning a language later in life usually involves a greater degree of explicit instruction