What people who enjoy copying this don’t seem to realize is that the words in the passage were cherry-picked to make this point. If you’d like to see a grammar professor’s eyes roll back into his head, bring up this “study.” It worked for mine!
We terid a few mroe sorht peasasgs lkie it taht the pssoerofr had wtiretn up to domattersne, and nnoe of the orehts were reletmoy ilnibtlegile. By the end of that casls the motrjiay of my catsesmals tgohhut taht the bugos sudty was the work of putoerentis titws. No one was unludy sesurrpid that a sasarmts had meangad to fool polpee on the irtnneet, toghuh.
Sometimes, even when it’s especially grating you must simply ignore it.
I was in for my first session of radiation therapy today, when the technician went to great lengths to explain all that was going to occur.
I was about to lie on the table to get my dose, and she kept using “lay” and “laying” over and over again, when she should have said lie and lying. It runs across the board in with nurses and medical technologists. None of them has a clue in the proper usage of the terms. (Okay, most, but I’ve yet to meet one who does, and I love these gals.)
Did I correct the techie, today? Or anyone else in the hospital who made the same mistake. No.
Will I? Probably not.
It is unlikely to generate anything but resentment, and I’m not going to make this a mission in life.
I went to Catholic School from grades 1 to 8, and still remember the nuns teaching me:
Yes, the point is spelling grammar incorrectly when you are correcting them to get the grammar nazis to throw a conniption. It really is only satisfying on internet message boards.
No, the scnoed praaaprgh brelay sweold me dwon, and I hvae tierd tihs with a txet-smacrbilng poargrm boefre and it wkeord just fine. You dn’ot need to crrehy-pcik at all.
I think the grammar nazi thing is a bit misplaced most of the times that somebody is accused of it. Go to the trouble of posting to correct somebody’s typo or one grammatical error? Then you’re an arsehole. I make typos galore myself. But pointing out that you shouldn’t post 2000 characters of leet speak is fine. I’ve still been called a grammar Nazi for the latter, though (not on this board).
I think that correcting peoples grand mas make you look really intelligent and it will probably result in girls letting you put your hand in their bras.
I only ask people whether they missed that day in grammer class if they’re part of the Fellowship of Amateur Nitpickers like me (we’re worse than the pros, they stop after 8 hours). It is specially enjoyable if it’s one who’s made me take out The Big Book to prove that my own usage or spelling was correct (yes, “towards” is a Real Word and I don’t care what your 4th grade teacher pet peeves were).
But even though I do try to restrain myself otherwise it can sometimes be painful to read a post where someone manages to write “there” every time it should be “their” and “their” every time it should be “there”. And of course puts and apostrophe before the s in any possessive pronouns. And… cries silently in a corner
Doing it over chat channel or other form of IM, ok. But if you have access to a spellchecker use it, please!
If you point out a mistake in English or Spanish to someone from the Czech Republic (country picked at random) they usually ask for clarification and thank you - I know better than to correct someone who’s screwing up his own language; they’re bound to either come up with “well, where I’m from we do it like that” or “the fuck do u know u lzer, u’r a foreiner.”
For openers, you would speak it to a large number of people at this website. This includes some Dopers you don’t really want to talk to because you find their views offensive.
“Chastise”? I think even as a teacher one’s role isn’t to chastise, but to help.
I do, however, think it’s useful to point out that spelling errors are not grammar errors. Neither are “errors” in word choice. And often, punctuation errors have nothing to do with grammar (such as misuse of an apostrophe).
That said, there’s one grammatical error that seems to be coming up more now in public discourse. It’s the use of unreal past conditionals in this way:
“If I would’ve gotten there sooner, I would’ve met the president.”
instead of:
“If I’d gotten there sooner, I would’ve met the president.”
Apparently well-educated people who otherwise use English grammar correctly often do this. But I’d never bother to point that out to someone, when it’s not part of my job. It would just be too much effort to explain why it’s grammatically incorrect, and, more importantly, you can’t help coming across as a sanctimonious jerk.
Furthermore, I don’t understand the RO in pit threads about grammar. I think we need a new term: “self-righteous recreational outrage” (SRRO)–pitting others solely for the purpose of elevating your self-esteem.
