As a fellow member of the 'lost generation', I may be talking rubbish here, but isn't the whole subject of formal English grammar supposed to be an attempt by tedious 18th century pedants to treat English (messy language with lots of irregularities) as if it were Latin (much more strictly defined - in the written language anyway)? It sounds a particularly foolish enterprise, and one that gave us such gems as 'Never split an infinitive'; in Latin (or so I'm told - it wasn't fashionable to teach us that either), it is impossible to split an infinitive - 'to go', say, is just one word, so the pedants decided that, Latin being the "perfect" language, it should be decreed that "to boldly go" was an invalid construction in English. I think it was because of nonsenses of this type that the teaching of formal grammar in schools fell into decline.
Anyway, enough tangential rubbish.
Dave