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Meet Mamie Webb Hixon

Director of the UWF Writing Lab

WRITING LAB OFFICE LOCATION:  Building 50, Room 163

LAB OFFICE HOURS: Vary by semester

E-MAIL:  mhixon@uwf.edu

WRITING LAB OFFICE PHONE NUMBER: 850.474.2029, then press 3

HOME PHONE NUMBER:  850.433.3324

Hello, Grammarians, Grammarian Wannabes, Grammarian Need-to-bes, and Grammarian Soon-to-bes: I am your UWF Resident Grammarian:

Let me
Undangle your participles
Make your subjects and verbs agree
Fuse your run-on sentences
Unsplit your infinitives
And help you choose between I and me.

You don't need a spell checker or a grammar checker:  Let me be you're grammer checker and spell checker.

My email signature includes this quote: "I am silently correcting your grammar"—and I usually am!

Some call me the Grammar Guru or the Grammar Lady, even the Grammar Goddess; others call me the Watchdog of the English Grammar; a few call me the Grammar Police Officer, whose job is “to serve and correct.” I've also been called a Grammar Geek, the Grammar Grouch, and a Grammar Junkie.  I have even inherited the title Grammar Nazi. I'm known in some circles as a Grammartizator and a Grammartizer because people are astonished that I actually enjoy diagramming and parsing sentences and just "grammartizing" the English language. 

I'm often greeted with, "Oh, you're that Grammar Lady; you teach Grammar to the Grammarless."  When people find out what I teach, they remark, "Oh, I have to watch my grammar when I'm in your presence."  At least one person said to me, "Oh, you're the Grammar Lady; I need you to proofread my life."  Whatever grammar monikers people use for me, my name is Mamie Webb Hixon, and I have a Grammar Gene. 

As UWF’s Go-to Grammarian, I, along with the Writing Lab staff, am available to help you meet the expectations of your readers who demand your strict adherence to the principles of grammar in your written work, including emails and other forms of social media. 

Here's what a former student from one of my 1990 courses said to me in a June 10, 2009 email:

You were my grammar professor at UWF in 1990 and supervised my student teaching at Tate in 1991.  Both were most memorable for me. . . .  Must tell you that in grad school we took several classes on child language development, and in all those classes I was known as the grammar expert!  Fellow students would come to me when they had a particular grammar question, and thanks to you I knew the answer.  The professor pulled me aside one day and inquired as to how I knew so much about English grammar.  And I sad, "Well I was taught by Mamie Hixon at UWF in Modern Grammar and Usage!" 

Mamie Webb Hixon's Academic Profile

Since 1982, Mamie Webb Hixon has been director of UWF's Writing Lab, where she created the Grammar Hotline to respond to callers' and emailers' questions about grammar, mechanics, sentence construction, spelling, word usage, pronunciation, and documentation. Because her philosophy of teaching grammar is to know grammar well enough to make it simple enough for others to understand, she wrote a grammar book at the urging of several Writing Lab student-clients who had read and found helpful the numerous grammar handouts she wrote and compiled for student use in the Writing Lab.  This book Real Good Grammar, Too is published by Kendall/Hunt Publishers of Dubuque, Iowa.  Another grammar handbook she authored is Essentials of the English Language published by Research & Education Association, Piscataway, New Jersey.

As a UWF assistant professor of English, Hixon teaches face-to-face and online Practical Grammar classes to student writers who want to polish their grammar; another face-to-face grammar class, LIN 3742 Modern Grammar and Usage, to prospective English teachers and other students who want to learn “the grammar of grammar”; and two literature courses: African-American Literature and Black Women Writers.

As a grammarian, Hixon has presented a number of on-the-job grammar and professional writing workshops to business people and other professionals, including but not limited to law enforcement officers, medical and legal professionals, social services employees, and educators. Hixon’s workshop topics range from “Switching Gears—from the Living Room to the Board Room” and "Grammar on Trial" to "Mo' Betta English."  Additionally, Hixon has done television grammar at BLAB-TV, WKRG-TV 5, and WEAR-TV 3. You can also hear Hixon every Monday presenting radio grammar at 6:45 a.m. on WRNE 980 AM & Choice 106.9 Radio.  The program is called It's GrammarTime, a ten-minute talk show on which Hixon takes grammar out of the grammar handbook and English classroom into cars and living rooms with either questions or answers about the nuances of American English grammar.

As a writer (though Hixon considers herself “not a writer but a teacher who writes”), Hixon is a contributing writer and co-editor of four volumes of books published by the local African-American Heritage Society titled When Black Folks Was Colored, a collection of vignettes and poems about growing up "colored" in the South.  She is also a contributing writer and co-editor of Images in Black: A Pictorial of Black Pensacola. In 2002, Hixon compiled and edited a chapbook published by Alzheimer's Family Services called Remembering Those Who Can't Remember.

Hixon is most known in the university and Pensacola communities for writing, producing, and directing several editions of Our Voices Are Many, a theatrical presentation of African-American literature and history through poetry, speeches, music, song, and dance, featuring a cast of local musicians, dramatic readers, dancers, and singers, who are community volunteers and students and faculty from UWF, PSC, and the Escambia County School District. These performances have included “The Souls of Black Folk,” “Celebrating the Harlem Renaissance,” “The Daughters of Africa,” and “The Sons of Africa: Celebrating the Voices and Images of Black Men in America.”

Hixon is a member of both the LeaP (Leadership Pensacola) class of 1987 and the West Florida Leadership Academy class of 1999.  She is the recipient of a number of awards including, but not limited to, UWF’s Distinguished Faculty Service Award in 1993 and 2010, UWF’s Excellence in Teaching Award in 1995 and again in 2003, the NAACP Pyramid Builders Award in 1994, and the UWF President’s Award for Leadership in Diversity in 2001. Hixon recently received the Champion of Education Award from the Pensacola Chapter of UNCF, the United Negro College Fund.

Bear and Hixon
Mamie Webb Hixon and Lewis Bear Jr. were honored with the Champion of
Education Award from the Greater Pensacola Chapter of the United Negro Fund.

 

United Negro College Fund

Lewis Bear Jr., chairman of the University of West Florida Board of Trustees and president/CEO of Lewis Bear Company, and Mamie Webb Hixon, assistant professor of English and director of the UWF Writing Lab, were honored by The Greater Pensacola Chapter of the United Negro College Fund during its Inaugural Chairman’s Luncheon.

Both Bear and Hixon received the Champion Award, recognizing their dedication to education, students and the community. The luncheon served as a fundraising event to support scholarships for Pensacola area students who otherwise would not have the financial resources to attend college.

The UNCF Greater Pensacola Chapter was established to create a college-ready culture in Northwest Florida that provides students with support to succeed in college. UNCF is the nation’s largest and most effective minority education organization that supports students through scholarships and other programs.