# For bitching about language pedantry, other posters' language, and language in general

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/for-bitching-about-language-pedantry-other-posters-language-and-language-in-general/1003135>\
**Category:** The BBQ Pit\
**Created:** [June 16, 2024, 10:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/for-bitching-about-language-pedantry-other-posters-language-and-language-in-general/1003135 "2024-06-16T22:40:24Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 1\
**Showing post:** 356

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![wolfpup](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/wolfpup/32/10618_2.png) [@wolfpup](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/wolfpup)\
**Post date:** [June 28, 2024, 6:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/for-bitching-about-language-pedantry-other-posters-language-and-language-in-general/1003135/356 "2024-06-28T18:16:19Z")

</div>

> [@Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](#):
>
> > [@wolfpup](#):
> >
> > I never correct people in real life, and even here on the Dope, it’s usually in fun.
> 
> What’s “fun” for you isn’t fun for your targets.

I don’t have “targets” in the context that I’m talking about. This is the practice on the SDMB of interrupting a serious discussion with a one-word correction, the correction being subtly humourous precisely because of its performative pedantry and obvious uselessness. It’s nothing at all like the example you cited, which is genuinely sad and regrettable.

The very few times when I’ve sarcastically attacked something written by another poster, it was genuinely well deserved, **[as in this example](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/omnibus-trolls-r-us-thread/755489/4822)**. You won’t find the original that it refers to because it was cornfielded when the poster was banned.

> [@Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](#):
>
> And this shows that you fundamentally don’t understand how language works. Someone who says, “I could care less,” is no more careless than you’re careless when you use the contraction “it’s” earlier in your post instead of “it is.”

They are if my speculation about how the usage came about is right. It may not be right, but mishearing and careless repetition is precisely the premise of it.

> [@DSeid](#):
>
> Yes, word choice and usage, use of one or another grammar convention, is a marker, maybe less of education than of being or not being well read?

I think being well read has a strong correlation with one’s stylistic preferences in language, though I would consider that to be a form of education, even if not the formal institutional kind. I know that I have a tendency to write more formally than many, even on a message board. It probably comes from reading a lot since childhood, and in later life being immersed in scientific and technical writing.

---

_[View the full topic](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/for-bitching-about-language-pedantry-other-posters-language-and-language-in-general/1003135)._