Announcing the winner of the 2025 National Grammar Day Poetry Contest
By ACES Staff
ACES: The Society for Editing is pleased to announce that the winner of the the 2025 ACES National Grammar Day Poetry Contest is Salma Amanda Latifa for her poem “Language in Order.”
This is the 15th year that ACES has hosted its annual poetry contest in honor of National Grammar Day, celebrated annually on March 4.
Learn more about the ACES National Grammar Day Poetry Contest.
ACES received 86 poems in response to its call for short poems with the theme of grammar, punctuation, and all things language-related. Mark Allen, who serves as president-elect on the ACES Board of Directors, led a committee of five judges made up of language experts and poets.
Read the poems.
Scroll down and read about the judges.
The winning poem
Latifa’s verse consists of three quatrains, each with two rhyming couplets, calling out different aspects of English grammar.
“Salma Amanda Latifa provides a refreshingly earnest entry whose use of poetry makes me appreciate language in a new way,” said lexicographer John Kelly, one of the contest judges.
Meet the poet
The poem is a particular accomplishment, considering that English is Latifa’s third language. She lives in Indonesia and is completing a degree in business economics.
She started learning the language when she was young through school and self study. Her ever-growing love for reading and writing in English has led her to participate in writing competitions, which she was searching Google for when she came across the ACES contest.
“I thought it would be a great way to challenge myself creatively while celebrating my appreciation for language,” Latifa said. “My inspiration for this poem came from my appreciation for grammar and how it structures our communication.
“While writing it, I was reminded of my early school days when I first encountered these grammatical concepts. I remember struggling to grasp tenses, subject-verb agreement, and the roles of different parts of speech. However, over time, I began to see the beauty and order in language, which has now become a big part of my writing journey.”
Participating in the ACES National Grammar Day Poetry Contest was a natural progression, then.
“National Grammar Day is a great opportunity to celebrate language in a fun and creative way. I also enjoy challenging myself to write in different formats and poetry gives me a unique way to express my thoughts on grammar. Also, joining this competition is a meaningful way for me to fill my free time with something useful.”
More about the poem
Latifa intentionally chose a quatrain structure with rhyming couplets, she said.
“I found it to be the most effective way to convey the concept of language that I wanted to explore. This structure helps maintain rhythm and clarity while making the message more engaging. I enjoy poems that strike a balance between profound meaning and strong structure. I am particularly drawn to poetry that can express complex ideas in a simple yet impactful way.”
What’s next
After she completes her degree Latifa plans to pursue a master’s degree in business economics while remaining passionate about language and storytelling.
“That’s why I enjoy reading detective novels, comics, and exploring classic stories hidden in history and folklore,” she said. “Writing has always been an important part of my life since I was a child, whether through essays, short stories, or poetry.”
Read on for the winning poem and the poems that placed, followed by the 10 honorable mentions, and bios of the judges.
First place: Salma Amanda Latifa
Language in Order
Noun stands firm, giving a name,
Verb takes action, shaping the frame.
Adjective paints colors and hue,
Adverb explains how things ensue.
Tenses shift as time goes by,
Agreement stays, it won’t deny.
“If” makes a promise, setting a tone,
The outcome is clear, never unknown.
Active speaks loud, steady and bright,
Passive rearranges, subtle yet right.
Gerund dances, Infinitive strides,
Language is neat, meaning abides.
Second Place: Andy Hollandbeck
I don’t mean to seem confrontational
About use of the marks punctuational,
But commas, you snarks,
Go inside the quote marks
When you’re dealing with copy quotational.
Third Place: Santiago Ibarra
There lies the puppet in a heap
Limbs slack and twisted as if by
Some accident of gravity,
Waiting for strings to pull it up.
It cannot stand nor dance sans strings.
A thought, however fully formed
In the mind, can’t communicate
Without agreed forms of meaning.
So, too, words wait limp for grammar
To articulate, make them dance,
That the crowd might shout, “What a show!”
Fourth Place: Joseph Stitt
screaming in horror,
the misplaced modifier
frightens me awake
Fifth Place (three-way tie)
Matt Tompkins
The law of karma governs this-then-that:
A universal flow, cause and effect.
The ‘law of comma’ stops us falling flat:
Reminds us to observe, take pause, reflect.
The Period delineates a span:
The Cambrian, the Byzantine, the Blue.
The period, likewise, puts up a hand:
Don’t let the sentence get away from you.
Parentheses and brackets set off space:
The cordon ropes of what belongs to whom.
But all these marks obscure a deeper face:
From every point, a fresh ellipsis blooms.
The dash, the slash—we draw them bright and stark.
But might the hyphen be the truest mark?
John A. Mathews
I thought the sign read
“Haiku Club” not “Hiking Club.”
We walked for hours. Hours.
Martha Raffaele
Divisions abound.
Will subject-verb agreement
Also elude us?
Honorable Mentions
Greg Beatty
A Punctuated Relationship
We met: exclamation point!
She seemed to glow in the dark.
Before I approached, parentheses,
as I looked for the moment to seize.
I finally asked, question mark.
Insert cliché here about a lark.
Now we fight and argue without end.
Period: no longer lovers, even friends.
I tried a grand gesture on my knees.
How bad a decision? Ellipses…
Moniqa Paullet
Word art, text flourish—
Trying to communicate…
Inscrutable swirls.
Kassidy Barber
Ode to the Idiom
My brother told me I’m an idiom
because I accidentally
killed two birds with one stone.
I still have no idea
what he meant.
Vanina
World of words
Golden vowels shimmer,
So many words left unsaid,
So many worlds bloom.
Tom Greenlee
Tangled Web: A Riddle
If I lay a lie, have I laid it,
Or is this liar laying who said it?
What a web has been lain!
Can a layman explain
How to tell the mistake where I’ve made it?
Lex Friedman
I literally couldn’t care less
To infinitively split, I say yes
Its fun and its nice
Their, I mispelled “its” twice
Hope it doesn’t effect you, I guess!
Matt Tompkins
transcribing life’s prose,
I find that each period
blooms an ellipsis
Gael Spivak
I went out one day
in a most singular way
and came back a they.
Gasp.
Oh, calm down, bae.
It doesn’t work that way.
Erin Burkett
Though I’m disputed
I know my value; I am
The Oxford comma
Jessica Stump
Stet in Peace
A red pen slashing through the prose,
or through the verse, to and fro,
knows what joy stet can sow
in an author’s heart, full of woe
that their darlings should wither with no
show of mercy, no song of praise,
and so they seek to be saved
in the margins, by a word older than they,
four letters—a gift, a stowaway,
floating amid a red sea of casualties—
and lo, author and editor agree:
Darling dearest, may you live
another day.
Thank you, judges
Big thanks go to our five celebrity judges, who sorted through all the entries in a tight timeframe to decide on our winner:
Mignon Fogarty, better known as Grammar Girl, is five-time winner of Best Education Podcast in the Podcast Awards and author of seven books about language, including the newly retitled and rereleased, “The Grammar Daily.”
Lisa McLendon runs the Bremner Editing Center at the University of Kansas, where she teaches editing and writing. She spent 12 years as a newspaper copy editor after getting a Ph.D. in Slavic languages and linguistics. She’s not much of a poet but always appreciates fine wordplay. She is the president of the ACES Education Fund.
Gary Lawless is a poet, bioregional advocate, and co-founder of Gulf of Maine Books in Brunswick, Maine. His score of poetry collections include “Poems for the Wild Earth,” “Caribou Planet,” and the most recent, “How the Stones Came to Venice.” Gary and his wife, Beth Leonard, live with their cat and two rescue donkeys on the old farm of the late authors Henry Beston and Elizabeth Coatsworth.
Leslie “Fuquinay” Miller is the winner of the 2024 ACES National Grammar Day Poetry Contest. Her work includes a poetry collection, “BOYGIRLBOYGIRL,” and a nonfiction book,”Let Me Eat Cake: A Celebration of Flour, Sugar, Butter, Eggs, Vanilla, Baking Powder, and a Pinch of Salt.” She’s currently working on a full-length poetry manuscript, which she’s writing with a little help from her friends. She lives in Baltimore, where she volunteers with a group working to protect democracy from fascism.
John Kelly is a writer, editor, former educator, and all-around word nerd. He previously oversaw all content at Dictionary.com, defined emoji for Emojipedia, and wrote language columns at Oxford Dictionaries and Slate. At mashedradish.com, he blogs about etymology at the intersection of news, life, and everyday language. He lives in Cincinnati.
We also offer a huge shoutout to our contest organizer:
Mark Allen, contest organizer, is an editor, consultant, and teacher with 35 years professional experience working with words. He has spoken about copy editing for private companies and at conferences, workshops, and webinars. He hosts a regular Zoom chat on all things lexical, That Word Chat, and serves as president-elect on the ACES: The Society for Editing’s Board of Directors.
ACES: The Society for Editing
ACES: The Society for Editing is the nation’s leading organization of editing professionals, educators, and students. Founded in 1997 by copy editors, ACES is dedicated to improving the quality of the written word and the working lives of editors. It sets standards of excellence and gives a voice to editors in journalism, government, business, publishing, and beyond through top-notch training, networking, and career opportunities. ACES hosts an annual in-person conference and, since 2022, an annual virtual conference. ACES Academy hosts monthly webinars. ACES also offers certificates in editing, which it co-hosts with The Poynter Institute, a global leader in journalism.
