Are you a grammar bully?

[susandennis]

After reading and commenting and reading another comment, I decided this was just too good not to share.

Plus, remembering my own delicious typos - not really grammar errors - but I did once have Ethel Merman (instead of Ester Williams) swimming 2 miles a day and last night, on Google Plus, I waxed poetic about my new GPS saving me when it was actually my UPS.

But, still...

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Originally posted by andrewducker at Are you a grammar bully?

Do you, when seeing a grammatical mistake in someone's informal writing, which doesn't cloud the clarity in any way, feel the need to leap in and make it all about you, by correcting it?

Do you feel the need to do so even when people are not making mistaked at all, but simply making stylistic choices which would have offended your English teacher back in the dark ages?

Then, frankly, you can fuck off back to your own Facebook/Journal/Blog/Whatever, and rant about The Youth Of Today _there_.l

Because that kind of behaviour gets in the way of proper discussion of what the person was talking about.* It turns it into a discussion of a piddling side-point which is almost certainly utterly irrelevant to the point they wished to discuss.

What it effectively does is say "When I was young, I had this set of rules beaten into me so much that I twitch whenever I see someone break them. And so I am now going to beat them into you." It's derailing, it's bullying, and it's the kind of behaviour up with with which I will not put**.

So, from this point onwards, I'm going to delete comments on this journal (and on FB, where I already made this announcement) which do this***.

(Exception: This post. Feel free to argue about it in the comments.)


*Unless, of course, said discussion is _about_ grammar, in which case feel free to let loose.
**Yes, I know that Churchill didn't say that
***To quote ciphergoth "There'll be a lot less comments like that by the time you've finished."

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Comments

[liminal-space.livejournal.com]

a) One must know the rules before one can go rogue and break them as a stylistic choice. This is not the norm.

b) Coherent, clear writing requires we follow the established rules. When someone is actually trying to sound smart, make a valid point, and get their ideas across, muddying them with poor writing undermines the intent. I have problems with it in informal writing, too, but NOWHERE to the extent I do with for reals writing. Texts? Not so much -- everything goes there.

c) It's usually the poor writers who take *any* criticism of poor writing/crazy grammar mistakes as bullying. I can handle that.

With all that said, I'm far less particular than this sounds.

[thistle-chaser.livejournal.com]

Is it bad that I couldn't read Are you a grammar bully? because my eye kept catching on all the mistakes in it? :P

I can't help seeing typos and grammar issues (I'm an editor by trade, I can't just turn it off when I'm reading non-work items), but I very rarely point them out unless asked. The one exception to that is when someone is being mean -- I'll happily cut them down with my figurative red pen!

This is not to say I never typo or make a mistake! I'm sure I make tons of them. It's just easier to see it in someone else's writing than my own.

[howeird]

That's the kind of rant I'd expect from someone with poor grammar skills.