Perhaps it comes down to what you mean by “grammar”

I would argue that while for writers grammar can be (to quote Joan Didion) “the piano they play by ear,” this won’t do for editors. Editors should not only know how to read the notes, they should be able to compose the music.

That is, any editors who will be reading the words and working with those words.

In the realm of publishing, perhaps it is possible for developmental editors to get by without a solid understanding of how the language works. Such editors are more typically working with larger structures: Does the work in question follow the conventions of the genre? Or if it breaks them, does it do so in an interesting, deliberate, and creative way? Does the overall structure of the discussion, the argument, the narrative cohere? Do the parts support the whole? Is the organization logical and consistent? And so on.

An editor working solely with larger structures of the piece is often not reading and parsing individual sentences. That editor is not approaching the work the way that the audience will, from the ground up, reading the words and making sense of them. Building up the structures of thought that the writer intends, and then following the writer down that path.

But for any editor who will be down in the weeds, reading the words . . .

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See the full piece, published in Corrigo: