# Do you correct people's grammar mistakes? **URL:** \ **Category:** In My Humble Opinion\ **Created:** [December 5, 2009, 11:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-you-correct-peoples-grammar-mistakes/520142 "2009-12-05T23:50:20Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 9\ **Page:** 4
**Author:** ![statsman1982](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/e79b87/32.png) [@statsman1982](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/statsman1982)\ **Post date:** [December 7, 2009, 6:30am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-you-correct-peoples-grammar-mistakes/520142/61 "2009-12-07T06:30:12Z")
> [@Indistinguishable](#): > > Well, that isn’t necessarily the best way to describe the situation. But what the word “who” is doing in that example is exactly analogous to the role played in “The prize will be awarded to whoever eats the most pies” by the word “whoever”; that is, “whoever” is the subject of the element “whoever eats the most pies”, which is itself employable as a noun phrase, in this case as the object of the overarching sentence. This construction is called a fused relative (also known as a nominal relative), and is perfectly grammatical and ubiquitous in English. It’s like a special, more compact variant of the construction in “Can I help the person who is next?” or “The prize who will be awarded to the person who eats the most pies” [to which you might again object that something is being illegitimately used as both a subject and an object, though to raise such an objection would again be misguided]. > > The only unusual thing in “Can I help who’s next?” is the use of the word “who” to head the fused relative (a role generally limited to “what” and the -ever words (“whoever”, “whatever”, etc.) in modern English). But there’s nothing fundamentally wrong with some words functioning in this way, and never has been. > > (snip) I think I might have learned something new here. It would be incorrect, then, to write: “The prize will be awarded to \*\*whomever \*\*eats the most pies”? Doesn’t “whomever” act as the object of the preposition “to”? Does the need of a noun clause to have a subjective pronoun override the rule that a pronoun following the word “to” is in the objective case, e.g., “The prize will be awarded to \*\*me” \*\*(not “to I”)? ---
**Author:** ![Indistinguishable](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/90ced4/32.png) [@Indistinguishable](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Indistinguishable)\ **Post date:** [December 7, 2009, 6:54am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-you-correct-peoples-grammar-mistakes/520142/62 "2009-12-07T06:54:56Z")
I just noticed: > [@Indistinguishable](#): > > “The prize [del]who[/del] will be awarded to the person who eats the most pies” The strikethroughed\* element is a typo, of course, and should be removed. \*: Or perhaps “struckthrough” or “strickenthrough”? Well, “strikethroughed” is what came to mind first, anyway. ---
**Author:** ![Inner\_Stickler](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/inner_stickler/32/318_2.png) [@Inner\_Stickler](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Inner_Stickler)\ **Post date:** [December 7, 2009, 7:09am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-you-correct-peoples-grammar-mistakes/520142/63 "2009-12-07T07:09:03Z")
> [@Indistinguishable](#): > > \*: Or perhaps “struckthrough” or “strickenthrough”? Well, “strikethroughed” is what came to mind first, anyway. This is one of those headless noun phrase thingies, right? Like grandstand? The past tense is grandstanded rather than grandstood. Sweet. I don’t really get het up about grammar mistakes except for misuse of reflexive verbs. (Oh, I also get irritated with people using women as an adjective rather than female. Like women pilots, women doctors, women construction workers, etc. It’s not that I object to using a noun to describe another noun. That happens a lot. It’s the fact that no one would say men pilots, men doctors, men construction workers. They would say male if they even felt it necessary to qualify their statement. I don’t ask for much other than one be consistent.) ---
**Author:** ![sundog66](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ee7513/32.png) [@sundog66](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/sundog66)\ **Post date:** [December 7, 2009, 7:45am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-you-correct-peoples-grammar-mistakes/520142/64 "2009-12-07T07:45:48Z")
This is the height of insanity…imposing your personal stylistic tastes onto others under the pretense that you’re correcting “grammar mistakes”. You might as well go around “correcting” people’s hair color. And then to justify the foolishness with something as incoherent as, “‘Who’ is a pronoun and can’t be used as the object of a sentence.” 1. Sentences don’t have objects. Verbs and prepositions do. 2. ‘who’ is used as an object all the time (e.g., as the object of ‘see’ in ‘who did you see?’). 3. Whether or not ‘who’ can be an object isn’t even relevant to the sentence you think you’re “correcting”; the object is the whole phrase “who’s next”, which has syntactic properties very different from ‘who’ by itself and does not function as a pronoun by any stretch of the imagination. ---
**Author:** ![Floater](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/dc4da7/32.png) [@Floater](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Floater)\ **Post date:** [December 7, 2009, 9:58am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-you-correct-peoples-grammar-mistakes/520142/65 "2009-12-07T09:58:21Z")
> [@dragoncat](#): > > I also hate it when people say, “What was your name?” like your name has changed since you told it to them five minutes ago. This situation seems perfectly possible to me: “What was your name (again, I forgot what you just told me)?” ---
**Author:** ![ianzin](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/ed655f/32.png) [@ianzin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ianzin)\ **Post date:** [December 7, 2009, 12:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-you-correct-peoples-grammar-mistakes/520142/66 "2009-12-07T12:12:46Z")
I never usually correct anyone’s mistakes. There are two exceptions. I will do so if I am asked to. I will also do so if the person who has made the mistakes is pontificating in some obnoxious, ultra-pious way about something or other, such as how perfect his own work is, and he deserves to be taken down a peg or two. ---
**Author:** ![Sigmagirl](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/c89c15/32.png) [@Sigmagirl](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sigmagirl)\ **Post date:** [December 7, 2009, 2:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-you-correct-peoples-grammar-mistakes/520142/67 "2009-12-07T14:10:05Z")
I am an editor and I don’t correct people’s grammar unless they ask me to do it. Colloquial, everyday conversation? As I tell people, “When I ain’t at work, I talks just like y’all.” If you want me to look over your resume or term paper, or when I’m watching TV and yelling back at the anchorman “Don’t say that!” or when the restaurant menu offers a “stake sandwich,” yes, I can and will make a point of it. ---
**Author:** ![RickJay](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/bb73d2/32.png) [@RickJay](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RickJay)\ **Post date:** [December 7, 2009, 2:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-you-correct-peoples-grammar-mistakes/520142/68 "2009-12-07T14:43:25Z")
It’s quite telling that at least two of the people in the thread who’ve talked about correcting other people’s grammar have been wrong about their grammar. Gaudere’s Law, people. There are only three occasions where it is EVER proper to correct someone else’s English: 1. If it’s a professional task (teachers, editors, technical writers, etc.) 2. If they ask you to, and 3. Helping a child learn, _as long as you’re absolutely sure you’re right._ Correcting aother person’s grammar just in the course of day to day conversation is the height of vulgarity and insolence. ---
**Author:** ![Vihaga](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/v/b4bc9f/32.png) [@Vihaga](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Vihaga)\ **Post date:** [December 7, 2009, 4:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-you-correct-peoples-grammar-mistakes/520142/69 "2009-12-07T16:35:42Z")
I completely agree with **RickJay**. I don’t correct other adults’ grammar are because it’s an incredibly arrogant thing to do, because I generally try to avoid doing things that make me look far more boorish than the person I’m correcting, and becauase I don’t want Gaudere’s Law to bite me in the ass. I could see myself doing it only if I were deliberately trying to annoy someone. It’s just that rude. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-you-correct-peoples-grammar-mistakes/520142.md?page=3)