A laudatory expression for “an expert in grammar”

Question

All too often, the 19th century scholars who wrote volumes on English grammar are today accused of being pedantic; persnickety; puritanical and  prescriptivist poppycock grammarians.

In the 21st century the  epithets grammar Nazi and grammar police are launched at anyone brave (or foolish) enough to point out that the word photo's does not require an apostrophe, or that noone should be written as two words "no one". Which aren't even grammar corrections but spelling ones. Anyway...

What do call a person who is an expert on the English language and its grammar? A person who always provides a clear answer to any language problem, a person who is infinitely helpful, modest and kind.  Do we only call them an "expert" on grammar?

Is there a laudatory expression that we can use?

Here are just two I found on EL&U, the third was coined by me, but I'm sure there are many others.

crazy grammar genius
punctuation czar
grammar queen

N.B
EL&U rightly frowns on long lists, so no more than three suggestions please.

Shoe · Accepted Answer

A term that has laudatory connotations is language maven. Wikipedia defines maven as follows:

A maven (also mavin) is a trusted expert in a particular field, who
  seeks to pass knowledge on to others. The word maven comes from
  Hebrew, meaning "one who understands", based on an accumulation of
  knowledge.

As Wikipedia further notes:

Since the 1980s it (maven) has become more common since William Safire
  adopted it to describe himself as "the language maven". The word is
  mainly confined to American English, but did not appear with the
  publication of the 1976 edition of Webster's Third New International
  Dictionary; it is, however, included in the Oxford English Dictionary
  second edition (1989) and the American Heritage Dictionary fourth
  edition (2000). Numerous individuals and entities now affix maven or
  mavin to assert their expertise in a particular area.

The following is an extract from The New York Times, the newspaper in which Safire wrote a regular column about language issues (called On Language) until his death in 2009:

Though he jokingly anointed himself “Usage Dictator,” he was never
  comfortable with expectations that he play the part of language
  absolutist, handing down infallible decrees. “Maven” was a title more
  to his liking, a Yiddishism that he said contained its own “note of
  self-mockery.” (An incurable paronomasiac, he also enjoyed punning off
  the word, as in his 1993 collection of columns, “Quoth the Maven.”)

And further:

As battles raged between prescriptive grammarians and descriptive
  linguists and lexicographers, Safire more often than not played both
  sides against the middle.

Note: The On Language articles in The New York Times were continued for a while by maven Ben Zimmer, who is also a regular contributor to Language Log.

Erik Kowal · Answer

Professional linguist would be an accurate term for such a person, though it's not an all-encompassing one (because there are many 'grammar gurus' who do not make a living from their language expertise). We also have the terms English teacher and English professor for people who are (in principle) expert in English and disseminate their knowledge to others.

Terms like grammar Nazi and grammar police exist in response to the fact that:

1) not everyone welcomes having their linguistic practices commented on or 'corrected';

2) many self-styled experts cannot tell the difference between their own personal preferences and usages they are merely unfamiliar with, but apply their own prejudices regardless; and

3) some of them have a habit of claiming greater knowledge or expertise than they actually possess.

Incidentally, it is unlikely that I would describe myself as a grammar queen even if I possessed the necessary level of expertise to qualify for the title.

Regarding the term grammar guru, I have the following observations:

1) 'Grammar guru' does not occur in the OED as an established term.
2) The citations contained in the OED's entry for guru (of which a clone can be found here) refer solely to the term's religious usage until 1957, after which it occurs in a secular context, sometimes as a less-than-complimentary term.

(For instance, an article in the London Times dated 4 October 1968 reports the British Prime Minister Harold Wilson talking about Enoch Powell, the Conservative MP for Wolverhampton:

"In what was obviously intended to be a sneering reference, the Prime Minister in his facile glibness..described Mr. Enoch Powell as ‘the guru of Wolverhampton’."

Here, Wilson was using 'guru' as a snarky epithet for a political opponent whom he regarded as a false prophet and troublemaker — in April 1968, Powell had delivered his notorious 'Rivers of Blood' speech opposing new legislation that would make it easier for immigrants from the Commonwealth to settle in Britain.)

My attempts to pin down the earliest attested occurrence of grammar guru have been largely fruitless.

The term is not found either in Brigham Young University's Corpus of Contemporary American English (COCA), its Corpus of Historical American English (COHA), its Strathy Corpus (of Canadian English), or its British National Corpus (BNC); nor in Oxford University's BNC. I have searched other corpora too, but with the exception of BYU's Corpus of Global Web-Based English (GloWbE), which contained only a handful of what appeared to be relatively recent hits, these too were devoid of the term.

For what it's worth, the domain name grammarguru.com was (according to Whois.net) first registered in 1999.

The nearest I could come is a 1997 reference to slang guru by Jonathon Green, the renowned lexicographer of English slang, describing Eric Partridge (the author of inter alia A Dictionary of Slang and Unconventional English).

Ms Anne Thrope · Answer

Grammarian, perhaps? I appreciate a great editor, however, being an expert in grammar and knowing the applicable style guide are just prerequisites for being a great editor.

Hot Licks · Answer

Human

Unless they suffer from a birth defect or suffer some sort of injury to the language centers, humans have an innate ability to construct and parse human languages.  A child of 6 has command of most language features -- he just lacks vocabulary.

A "grammarian" knows the names of the various parts of speech, and can spout a bunch of supposed "rules" about language construction, but arguably his comprehension of the real rules is only marginally better than the child's.  In fact, the grammarian may have, as a result of attempting to reduce the rules etched in the brain to a set of marks on paper, lost some knowledge of the real language that the 6-year-old still possesses.

B Gaurav · Answer

Grammar wiz may be a satisfactory answer. 'Wiz' means a person who is extremely clever at something, so to refer to a person who provides any clear answer to any linguistic or grammatical problem we may use the coinage 'Grammar wiz'. 
Punctuation pundit cab be used to refer to person who is an authority in grammar (pundit means the same thing as guru). This coinage is alliterative so quite pleasing to the ears.

Wes · Answer

Why not create a new word or descriptive term.
How about “grammarsmith” since “wordsmith” has already been coined?

A laudatory expression for “an expert in grammar”

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