This paper synthesises progression made in the description of spoken (particularly conversational) grammar over the 20 years since the authors issued a paper in this journal advocating a re-thinking of grammatical description and pedagogy based on spoken corpus evidence. It starts with a glance back at the 16th century and the teaching of Latin grammar in England, with its stress on speaking the target language. Later grammars were ruled by written standards, a situation that continued till the 20th century, when recording technology and spoken corpora allowed new insights into the grammar of everyday speaking. The paper points out those insights which particularly challenge grammars derived only or mainly from written sources. It evidences the view that conversational grammar is non-sentence-based, co-constructed and very interactive, and that it poses questions regarding metalanguage. It briefly revises debates regarding spoken grammar and ELT/ESL pedagogy. It then considers 21st-century Internet technologies and e-communication, and implications for the spoken/written grammar distinction, asserting that description and pedagogy may need to undergo further re-thinking in light of the multi-modality which characterises e-language.