Would you correct someone if they used your and you're in the wrong context?

[Namast3]

I see it every day in emails.
I see it on mumsnet.
I get sent messages on dating apps with your instead of you're.
A good colleague of mine repeatedly uses your in the wrong context in professional emails.
I really struggle to understand why it's so difficult to differentiate...

Only my child .....

Omg really??? I must admit I would totally assume someone was not well educated if they make simple grammar mistakes like this because surely you would need to have written essays etc in decent English to gain any higher qualification.

Not necessarily. I work at a postgraduate uni that has a very high percentage of students with English as a second language (around 80% per year in our school). Minor grammatical errors don't have an effect on their grades. If their work is difficult to understand it would be marked down, if you can understand it just fine it won't be.

Oh and a junior colleague if I was supervising their work .

I hate 'aloud' and 'allowed'...drives me mad when i see on FB 'delete if not aloud' grrr !!!!

I would correct a schoolchild in a class. There were teachers in the family. I was a fairly good scholar but my grammar was corrected, even up to being an adult. I didn't mind. It wasn't done nastily. I do understand that there are dyslexic people who have difficulties but I also think that there is something of a careless attitude to English nowadays and almost a pride in not getting it right in some quarters. Are apostrophes taught to primary-aged children nowadays? Are they shown that you're is short for you are? Do they get a bit of practice with apostrophes or is it a two second mention?

@ShirleyPhallus I fear your standards would be too exacting for me.

Grammar lessons in schools in the UK is really lacking

@ShirleyPhallus That's a joke, isn't it? Isn't it?

@limitedperiodonly

Grammar lessons in schools in the UK is really lacking

@ShirleyPhallus That's a joke, isn't it? Isn't it?

Or is it? We shall never know

My grammar is shit. I will hold my hand up wholeheartedly on that one. However, stuff like MN and emails is (or is it are?) not an academic essay. If I can read and make sense of it, I don't care. I hate pedants, and people who claim it sets of "their OCD".

I quietly tut and/or roll my eyes while reminding myself to calm the duck down as they may be victims of autocorrect or could well be dyslexic

Penalty save from Shirley there. Though I think if we check the computer gizmo, we'll see the ball did indeed cross the line.

I think grammar is taught a lot better in schools now than it was in yesteryear. Ask most people over the age of 30 what a frontal adverb ial is, and even amongst the educated, you'll get puzzled looks.

I've come across the odd teacher (in my time as a parent) who can barely string a coherent sentence together (and uses terrible grammar). How can that be useful for children to learn the complex intricacies of the English language?

I would love to know what goes on in the head of someone who seethe (or have similar reaction) when they come across incorrect grammar or misspelled words. Could you describe your thought process in the situation where you understand the meaning of what you have read. I am not thinking about work context here.

I've always wondered whether there is such poor grasp of their native tongue for people in other European countries? Or is it just a British thing?

In day to day life it's not really an issue but I do cringe a bit when you see presenters on TV with the poorest grasp of their mother tongue. Someone like Joe Swash who is supposedly an actor!

I'd only correct my DP and my children.

@Geamhradh

Penalty save from Shirley there. Though I think if we check the computer gizmo, we'll see the ball did indeed cross the line.

When ds went to primary school spelling punctuation and grammar was really emphasised. He is 16 so it isnt that long ago. It is called SPAG for short.

@TizerorFizz, Spell check is useful but unless you check the grammar, you might have he wrong word but correct spelling. Their/there/they're, public/pubic, colonel/kernel, shut/shit etc

There's a radio broadcaster with a rhotic accent who says kernel for colonel

But SPAG was only really introduced as a big thing (to school children) for that 2005/6 cohort. I believe they were the first year to take the much more difficult KS2 exams?

I wouldn’t. The only exception would be if they themselves had been condescending to someone else about an error and in doing so had made the your/you’re mistake. I might correct them just to score a petty point in that case 😁

Generally, correcting someone like that (unless you are their teacher or similar and it's appropriate to do so) is probably going to make them feel embarrassed or upset and deliberately making someone feel like that just so you can congratulate yourself on your SPaG skills is quite peevish really. I think it's much worse to be a peevish person than to make a grammatical error.

SPaG is not an indicator of intelligence. I know some exceptionally clever people who were/are appalling at written English. Others who are dyslexic. I also know a couple of people with degrees who are not intelligent people in reality and one of them especially so when it comes to emotional intelligence.

Let's also remember that being intelligent does not mark someone's value as a human being. People who are not intelligent - which is out of everyone's control anyway - are not less important or valuable in any way. Pointing out that you think someone is unintelligent (which is basically what you are doing when you needlessly correct their SPaG) is just critiquing one facet of them as a person. I'm sure there are hundreds of things about all of us that others could find fault with. The way we treat people is far more important than whether we can spell or not.

@NewModelArmyMayhem18

I think grammar is taught a lot better in schools now than it was in yesteryear. Ask most people over the age of 30 what a frontal adverb ial is, and even amongst the educated, you'll get puzzled looks.

I've come across the odd teacher (in my time as a parent) who can barely string a coherent sentence together (and uses terrible grammar). How can that be useful for children to learn the complex intricacies of the English language?

Well, I passed Eng. Lang. O level and I was certainly taught in the 1960s about adverbial clauses of time, manner, place etc. but I don't know what a frontal adverbial is, so, please, what is it? When a local supermarket had a sign urging us to wrap up warm because we might have queues (early Covid) I did mutter about 'to wrap' being a verb, which therefore needed to be governed by the adverb 'warmly', but I didn't take my black marker pen.

Look it up, girl!! So I did. Fronted adverbials, it said. I say
'At the beginning of his shift in the sweetie factory he keeled over and fell into the vat of boiling sugar.' So, Upinaballoon, what is the fronted adverbial here? Please, Miss, 'at the beginning of his shift in the sweetie factory'.
Mmmm, maybe you're beginning to get it.

@PurpleCarpets

How is being extremely ignorant very correct?

Hi Diddy, to be fair the ignorance is on the part of those who don't know the difference!

I disagree. The ignorance is far more on the part of those who cannot see outside of their own very limited lives, so therefore never consider foreign people, poorly educated people, dyslexic people etc when they're busy judging.