Grammar Matters

I think the title of this post demonstrates what I'm thinking about. The word matters could be a verb or a noun in this context. In fact, both apply. I was looking yesterday for info on ambiguous antecedents and stumbled onto the IBM site. It had information for techies writing to an international audience. One of the guidelines was "do not omit articles or prepositions from sentences." As a former techie, I have to agree. There's nothing worse or more useless than ambiguous documentation. IBM gives the following example:

"What does the message Print control file list mean?

"Print all the files that contain controls.
A list of files that contain print controls.
Print a list of control files.
Print the controls and file the list.
Control the print and list the files.
Print and control a list of files."