I am currently reading through A.T. Robertson’s tome on Greek Grammar and came across this particularly humorous quote:

The older N.T. manuscripts are in are in harmony with the κοινή and have the movable ν and ς both before consonants and vowels with a few exceptions. The later N.T. Manuscripts seem to feel the tendency to drop these variable consonants . . . The failure to use this ν was originally most common in pause, sometimes even before vowels. Blass observes that it was only the Byzantine grammarians who made the rule that this ν should be used before vowels and not before consonants, a rule which their predecessors did not have the benefit, a thing true of many other grammatical rules. We moderns can teach the ancients much Greek!

There it is. Proof that grammarians can be funny!