Gramática: reflexões sobre um percurso de elaboração de manuais

As part of a round table entitled “Construction of descriptive grammars”, with authors of descriptive grammars of the Portuguese language, this text presents a personal refl ection that seeks to recover the key issues that have challenged me in this kind of work. In order to do this, I recover the historical route of the decisions I took in the construction of two manuals of Portuguese grammar and, at the same time, I gather, in other works I have written, information that can explain the guidelines adopted. Being consistent with my background and with my praxis, I offer some thoughts towards the fundamental proposition I have always considered such works to have, which is the school destination, something I can summarize in the question of what should constitute a work with the “grammar” at school.