Yep. That accounts for quite a wedge of the corrections I see - people enforcing an imaginary rule.
Two in particular from the past week:
“it’s only shepherd’s pie if its lamb, otherwise it’s cottage pie” - simply untrue. The earliest shepherds pie recipes used any meat that was available, and besides, shepherds are not people who eat sheep.
“You must not start a sentence with a conjunction!”
And why not, exactly? Or is there actually a rule?
Do they begin a flame war with their annoying comments or do they simply drop their steaming pile and disappear, never to respond to a rebuttal?
I seem to get the second type, though with my own videos that are lucky to break a hundred views, there aren’t many comments to worry about 
I remember one machine shop video where some guy simply stated “You don’t know what you’re talking about” or something similar, and disappeared. My rebuttal was “Well, there are dozens of ways to make a part in the machine shop, and I made the finished part and it does its job. What specifically did you see that was incorrect?” … no response.
Those comments are tedious and (thankfully) rare for me. I guess obscurity has its benefits!
This “feature” could be fixed.
I see what you did there.
I think you can make a stylistic case for not starting a sentence with a conjunction which would go something like:
A sentence should be a complete, stand alone unit of thought. Beginning a sentence witha construction means that it depends for understanding on a previous sentence. E.g. “I went to the shops. And I bought a loaf of bread.” The second sentence cannot stand alone. To be understood, it depends on the first. Breaking one idea into separate sentences makes for choppy reading and breaks up the flow of your thinking, making it harder for the reader to follow. I.e.
“Splitting one thought into pieces makes writing abrupt. And this makes it harder to follow. Or can put off readers altogether.” does (to my mind!) not read as smoothly as:
“Splitting one thought into pieces makes writing abrupt, and this makes it harder to follow or can put off readers altogether.”
On the other hand, your “breaking of the rule” above works well because the staccato effect is what you want- short sharp questions.
As so often, advice which is useful as a stylistic guideline becomes a restrictive imposition when phrased as a rule.
Not coincidentally, I suspect that a close examination of many grammatic rules would show that there are in fact really good stylistic advice, particularly for the kind of formal writing that was, in the past, essential to so much of life. Don’t use double negatives, don’t let subordinate clauses hang, make your sentences flow.
But style is matter of context and choice. And more to the point, style changes and evolves. Sticking to rules for writing developed by Victorians makes no more sense in the 21st century than sticking to Victorian rules of social etiquette, such as the working class “knowing their place”.
It also depends heavily on how the correction is given.
Grammatical/stylistic corrections? Outside of a teacher/student relationship, they’re very rarely welcome. And even inside of such a relationship, the corrections had better be beyond reproach. I had multiple professor incorrectly correct my writing, once to the point that I brought them my Strunk and White’s bookmarked at the page on colons.
Factual corrections? Done with grace and humility, they can be good. “You said that Seattle’s the capital of Washington, but I think it’s actually Olympia. I used to live there and was honestly surprised when I first drove into town and realized it was the capital.” Done without grace and humility: obnoxious. “Pff–did you actually just say Seattle’s the capital of Washington? uh, no, I think you mean Olympia. Public school kid, huh?”
The modern world of document collaboration has made this something of a minefield.
When I’m asked to comment on a shared document, it’s so I can add my professional expertise to the content, making sure that e.g. our funding bid accruately reflects the evaluation plan I’ve drawn up.
But I do occasionally also notice some grammatical/stylistic errors or clumsiness that, if it were me, I would write differently. Sometimes, I let these go because the writing is clear and doing its job. Sometimes, I really do feel that we’re not getting our point across properly and I make a correction. But in the low-bandwidth channel of track changes plus comments, I do wonder how it comes across to people, because I’m aiming for a helpful/supportive approach rather than being censorious but it’s hard to know how it lands.
As a manager, I’ve also had to do stylistic corrections on direct reports emails (after the fact) along the lines of “That’s not how you address the CEO” which is also a bit awkward but there is an element of teacher/student inherent int he manager/managee relationship so I just bite that bullet.
Oh, this is a good point. Yeah, in a collaborative document, I definitely make corrections–and you’re right that it can be tricky. Usually I say something like, “It looks great–thanks for writing this up! I went through and put in a few commas and the like, but please take a look and see if it still sounds right.”
I learned my lesson many years ago when working for a terrible boss. She wrote grants and asked me to get one grant ready to send out. Her prose was gibberish, so I thought I’d do her a favor and print a suggested revision with the prose cleaned up a bit. She was livid.
People can get very territorial about their writing.
In my experience, they’re not looking for discussion or debate, indeed even the most gentle and reasonable response is something they are likely to class as ‘hostility’. I try not to respond at all any more, but it’s not always easy to maintain that resolve.
Damn straight. It’s the difference between being helpful and being condescending and rude, but I think a lot of the time, the commentor isn’t consciously making that choice - the way they comment may simply reflect the way they value-compare themself to others.
Oh, boy! I get to be the one who points out that Stunk and White were wrong, or arbitrary, about a lot of their suggestions. Who says so? A lot of other language pendants, of course. Just Google “Stunk White Wrong.”
Absolutely–but when they’re wrong, it’s generally in the sense of forbidding some perfectly reasonable usage. When someone is forbidding a perfectly reasonable usage, showing them that even Strunk and White recommends that usage is usually enough to convince them to back off.
I wonder if this correlates with political conservativism. It seems to me that conservatives are the ones who are more likely to believe that there is a Way Things Are Supposed To Be, and it’s what they learned as a kid from the authority figures in their lives.
I presume that is intended as a joke?
Nope, just early-morning inattentiveness. Sorry.
Certainly with the resistance-to-change form of language pedantry, it often seems to be coming from a notion that the world was once perfect and golden and only started this pattern of terrible decline recently, coinciding with my presence here to witness it - and there are parts of Conservative philosophy that are a bit like that.
Well, just a data point. I had never heard of it before I read this thread.
As opposed to common things like, say, IMHO or IIRC.
And especially don’t start a new paragraph or a new post with one.
I also use “sorta”- but it all depends on context- “kinda” to me is best used in the informal sense.
Are sometimes used together when someone says the “should have done” such & such.
I try not to correct posters here on such grammar & spelling issues. One poster does annoy me by never using Caps.
A small annoyance- Rime vs Rhyme. Rime is actually the Old and Middle english spelling, However, some learned idiot thought it was based in latin opr more likely Greek, so changed the spelling to Rhyme, adding a letter and making it hard to spell-
The spelling rhyme (from original rime) was introduced at the beginning of the Modern English period, due to a learned (but etymologically incorrect) association with Greek ῥυθμός (rhythmos, rhythm).
The older spelling rime survives in Modern English as a rare alternative spelling
So,being as Rhyme was a mistake, i prefer “rime” but pedants who are unaware of how the history got made.
Interesting. It was in a New York Times crossword puzzle just last week (October 25) clued as referencing the internet acronym. If it’s hip enough to be in the New York Times crossword, then you know it’s pretty old and reasonably well known slang.
Guess it slipped by me somehow?
Mind you, I don’t follow tiktok, twitter (X, indeed!), Facebook, Reddit or other social media.
Signal to noise ratio is just not worth it, IMHO.