Do You/Should You Correct Someone's Grammar ?

[Cormac135]

Now you know how I feel.

Do you screw up the old grammar regularly as well ?

 

[jaynoel]

Growing up on a ranch in West Texas and being a product of their inferior school system, I'm sure that my grammar is lacking in certain circles. So like hoodedrat, I generally don't feel qualified to correct other people's grammar.
One exception:
A good friend (also the product of rural education) would often use the word "Messkins", (slang for Mexicans") when referring to Hispanics...
Since he is an extremely kind person who would rather die than offend someone, I finally corrected him on it, figuring he would want to know that what he was saying was a bit offensive.
He took it in stride and has not used the word In my presence since then. So HOW it's done and why are big factors.
I'm still trying to get up the courage to tell him his use of "Drive safe!" Is wrong as well! Lol

 

[jaysizzles]

I'm still trying to get up the courage to tell him his use of "Drive safe!" Is wrong as well! Lol

Apparently you don't need to be courageous in this case.
https://www.merriam-webster.com/words-at-play/drive-safe-or-safely

Hopefully you won't mind the correction in this case, as it seems from reading through this thread it's rude to do. I was genuinely interested when I read your post as I've said "drive safe" as well. (really...as if one needs to remind people to drive safely...like without the comment they'd have been reckless. )

 

[Peloso]

I don't correct, but I'll sometimes mentally tag the poster as dumb or just careless. Some people just don't care how they present themselves through their text, which is OK, as long as they've got something to say and a halfway intelligent way of saying it.

Spelling errors bother me. I'm a terrible typist and even worse at spelling. I've noticed lately that the spellcheck on my computer is getting better at correcting typos. I assume this is because of smartphone users and their spastic thumbs. Tech companies seem to be favoring smaller devices more and more. Fuckin' shit. Technology is moving too fast for me. I still burn music on CD's.

I will not read walls of text. I like when posters take into account ease of reading. rareboy and NotHardUp1 are two good examples of this. Short, succinct sentences, properly spaced get your point across better.

I wonder if there is a correlation between how a person presents themselves through their text and how they (generally) present themselves in real life. I tend to think there isn't.

 

[Alistair]

One of my pet peeves is seeing someone abbreviate things incorrectly, such as et cetera with ect. instead of the correct etc. I don't correct them, I just silently judge.

 

[gsdx]

One of my pet peeves is seeing someone abbreviate things incorrectly, such as et cetera with ect. instead of the correct etc. I don't correct them, I just silently judge.

It makes sense if you hear them pronounce it 'ex cetera'.

Spelling annoys me most when professionals don't do it properly. Yahoo is notorious for articles with terrible spelling and grammar, which means that neither the writers nor the editor know the rules... or can't be bothered looking them up. Our local free newspaper is bad for it as well since the previous editor retired a few years ago. Ad writers are just as bad.

Vocalising spelling errors annoy me, too. I hate it when I hear people say word such as 'acrost' or 'dilapitaded'.

 

[jaynoel]

Apparently you don't need to be courageous in this case.
https://www.merriam-webster.com/words-at-play/drive-safe-or-safely

Hopefully you won't mind the correction in this case, as it seems from reading through this thread it's rude to do. I was genuinely interested when I read your post as I've said "drive safe" as well. (really...as if one needs to remind people to drive safely...like without the comment they'd have been reckless. )

Thanks, for the clarification.
And THAT is a perfect example of why I generally don't correct other people's grammar!

 

[Dominus]

Checking in via advice from here

Now what?

 

[peeonme]

I remember JFK talking about 'Cuber', don't axe me why he said that in place of Cuba. There such things as dialects. Then we have colloquialisms. In Michigan 'for' is most often pronounced as 'fir'. Some folks in G.B. are very easy to understand, others aren't so easy. 'Words' such as y'all drive me crazy, but that's really my problem. I don't think that I am important enough to required that people drop words such as y'all, axe, fir or for and Cuber just to meet my standards.

 

[Alistair]

Checking in via advice from here

Now what?

Now ask the mods to correct the thread title.

 

[Dominus]

^ LOL and you accused me of trolling when I talked about my past food addiction. I guess I just can't win.

 

[Alistair]

^ LOL and you accused me of trolling when I talked about my past food addiction. I guess I just can't win.

When you make such an error in the thread title? No, that's not a win, it's a fail.

 

[luckynumbah7]

I'd suggest that we're is merely a typo when your intent was "were," even if it was sloppy in a title, no pun intended.

Something that we must come to terms with is the autonomous aspect of typing on keyboards. Often our brains are so far ahead of our fingers that they type facsimiles of what we are thinking, not exact copied.

In my posts, and even at work, I've begun to truncate random words or end them with the wrong suffix at times. It's not the word I am thinking, but it's the word my hands type. The same happened with Nazi's earlier in this thread. I certainly don't use apostrophes to make plurals, but the hands sometime just type the pattern of apostrophe s so often that it appears in the muscle memory, I guess.

It would be interesting to know what research has been done in neurology to explain how that works, or if it's just a brain tumor or something innocuous like that.

Some of it is probably due to spellcheck/'most word you use' programs. Improper words replaced would mean no physical correction, with the habits of particular spelling errors getting cemented. Be interesting if there were studies.

 

[Dominus]

When you make such an error in the thread title? No, that's not a win, it's a fail.

OK... And you accuse me of being a troll?

 

[Alistair]

OK... And you accuse me of being a troll?

You really need to learn how to take a joke.

 

[Thad1527]

Thanks for the link regarding "flat adverbs." Long ago my mother had a book with a "test": each of a set of characters made a statement, and all but one had a grammatical error. The one correct statement was, "I told my driver to go very, very slow." Now I fully realize why that was correct!

 

[The Loner]

Sometimes

 

[Vannie]

You really need to learn how to take a joke.

I'm trying. Oh you meant him. Nevermind.

 

[NotHardUp1]

Absoletely!

If the transgressor is an intern, 'cuz pecking order, and all.

 

[The Loner]

If the transgressor is an intern, 'cuz pecking order, and all.

As long as you don't ask him/her to make coffee.