I see what you did their.
Typing that was surprisingly painful.
For all of us, I assure you.
Yes, I definitely agree pedantry is a personality characteristic. I really do not suffer pedants well… in certain contexts it can be really impolite. The truth is, however, I’m pretty pedantic myself - I just keep my mouth shut and think corrections at other people.
MrTao thinks I’m being pedantic when, when we disagree on something, I go look it up. Or if it’s something I don’t know, I go look it up. In reality, I just want to know the answer! 1. So if I’m wrong, I don’t continue BEING wrong and 2. Because my brain is OCD that way.
Now, if I could only REMEMBER everything I’ve looked up, I would indeed be an enormously intelligent individual. Instead I am merely annoying, apparantly.
Let’s go sociological. Ethnographic, if you will.
-Are pedants born or made?
-What fields, disciplines, professions, etc., are likely to create them?
-What kind of early upbringings?
-Any patterns in national origin, regional culture, ethnicity, etc.?
-Do they necessarily score higher in IQ?
-How about EQ? Might they actually score lower?
No, it can’t. See if you can find out what an infinitive actually is. Maybe google can tell you. And the “rule” against splitting infinitives is what I call a fairy tale rule. What it actually is is an attempt to idiotically graft a rule from some other “better” grammar onto English. Same with the “rule” that prepositions are bad to end a sentence with.
I think the word you’re looking for is “asshole.”
Guy walks up to a student “Hey, where is the library at?” Student says “Here at Harvard, we don’t end sentences with a preposition.” Guy says “Okay. Where is the library at, asshole?”
Sometimes pedantry and condescension are perceived similarly.
Can I shake your hand? What I don’t understand is why I, in situation 1., am expected to crawl in the dust and apologise for being wrong. I just store the new information and start from there.
[ol]
[li]Guy has a bad grammar, but not in the way the student thinks. Ending a question about the whereabouts of something with “at”, like that, is not good language.[/li][li]Student is misinformed. There is nothing wrong with ending sentences with a preposition and I can’t understand what he is thinking about.[/li][/ol]
[Foghorn Leghorn] That there is a joke, son. [/Foghorn Leghorn]
Everyone’s a pedant, depending upon whose axe is being gored. Pedantry doesn’t begin and end with grammar. One person’s disinclination to believe the moon landings were not faked is another’s pedantry.
If it weren’t for pedantry this board would not exist, because some asshole is always wrong on the internet.
One should always use a comma before “because” in a sentence with a negative value therein, otherwise the sentence’s meaning changes, subtly, as in the one-sentence paragraph above this one, or clangoriously.
One can be a pedant and not be an asshole about it. Simply noticing someone’s error is different from pointing it out to them.
I would think the latter is indicative of either a controlling or narcissistic personality, depending on other variables. For instance, do they point out a mistake politely, discretely? Or do they wait till you’re in front of an audience and make a big embarrassing production out of it?
Then there’s the nature of the pedantry. I put grammar quibbles in a different category of annoyance than those dealing with content. I’m inclined to think of someone who focuses on style and form as being more of a control freak than someone who cares more about substance, however nitpicky.
As if I didn’t understand. I was just, in my pedantic way, pointing out the fallacy that far too many people believe in.
Meta.
Point to monstro.
Good post. When a pedant lacks the social skills and awareness to realize how rude it is to point out someone’s mistake in a way that could cause the mistaken person to feel embarrassed, especially when it’s about a minor detail that doesn’t really make a difference in the big picture, I think that reflects poorly on the pedantic person.