Pointing out mistakes on MN !

[Heyho111]

To hate it when people point out spelling mistakes and typos.

People ask for advice when they are worried, unsure etc and the first line of the first reply is about a spelling mistake. How is that helpful or supportive.

Typing on a phone screen , as I'm doing, is guaranteed to cause mistakes. Also the person may be dyslexic or out of practice.

Let people ask for advice free from criticism.

Rant over. I'm sure this post will now be scrutinised for errors.

How the friff do you pronounce Desigual. and why would you need to?

Posters repeatedly writing should of instead of should have makes me irrationally annoyed. It's not a typo or missing a bit of punctuation that can be overlooked. It's completely different words and adults really should know the difference IMO so I'm glad it gets pointed out.

YANBU.

I'm not a native English speaker. I'm pretty good now, but the flow of my sentences isn't always right and I can sometimes choose the wrong words or not get small differences between similar words. I don't really spell things wrong, but it's the grammar which I can mix up.

It can also be a lazy way of disagreeing with a poster. Instead of replying to an OP and saying you disagree and giving their argument, people will look for the tiniest mistake (or even something which isn't a mistake, but not to their liking, like 'hubs') and take the piss out of it.

I think it's part of the battle to keep this place adult and stop any slide into teeny txt talk or nethunny style incomprehensibility. One of the attractions of mumsnet (for a lot of people) is that it is adult to adult.

I hate text talk but you have to laugh at the irony

Considering the place is full of 'YABU/YANBU/DC/DD/DS/MIL/FIL/BF/FF etc

Well I agree to a point, except for posters who put up vast, rambling, paragraphs, with hardly any punctuation, when it's only common sense to break it down a bit, so that people can actually understand what they're saying.

I think it's extremely rude and ignorant to point out a person's spelling or grammatical errors.

I agree. It's SO rude and unnecessary.

I am sure I make lots of mistakes but I can't stand seeing 'lose' for 'loose' or vice versa. It makes me itch.

Personally I hate the way some people pronounce chorizo and Desigual. I am lucky in that I speak a bit of Spanish just like others are lucky that they went to a decent school or had a good English teacher.

What? Did I miss the bit in school when I was taught how to pronounce chorizo? What about quinoa? Did I miss the quinoa lesson too?

I have done it in the past but generally because the lack of full stops can make something very difficult to follow, especially where it is a long and complicated situation.

Typos are one thing, grammar or wrong word something different.
Would of, devine, defiantly - all those drive bonkers, and I'm foreign.

But I would not point it out, just suffer in silence.

I don't really see a lot of wanky corrections tbh.
I would actually rather be picked up on something I am unconsciously doing wrong (for e.g. have/of), on here so I do it properly in real life and therefore am less likely to look a tit when writing formally.

That said, I am terrible for shortening things with gay abandon - such as obvs & totes etc so will probs ignore anyway .

The chorit-zo pronounciation gets my goat. Have friends from South America who find much hilarity in this. Also, the whole lispy cerveza thing makes me chuckle.

Loose/lose; advise/advice; there/their.

^
They do really piss me off actually!

YANBU. This is not an academic forum, so why assume everyone has had a level of education which allows them to express themselves in writing without spelling/grammar errors?

I fully agree that it's not generally appropriate to point out errors on MN - about the only exceptions are ones where people are themselves being arsey about someone grammar, and where they are genuinely asking for a views on a draft letter or similar. However, in the UK at least, everyone has had that level of education. The vast, vast majority of us have been through 11 years of compulsory education, we may have encountered one or two teachers at most who didn't know that "could of" is wrong, but in practice we have all been taught that the phrase is "could have".

There are obviously all sorts of absolutely genuine reasons why that teaching hasn't taken, and obviously nobody's perfect and error-free anyway. But, please, don't try to make out that it's because you've had an underprivileged education.

banana- I agree.

Don't get annoyed, OP - just look on it as a learning curve. What wasn't learned properly at school can now be learned on MN.

Some people are just twats and some of those twats post on here. Mostly they get picked up on for acting like a twat.

It's only acceptable when the person is acting like an arse . Then all gloves are off!

Aww, am I still allowed to do it when someone is a troll/goady fucker? I like doing it then! It really, really pisses them off when you focus on something like that rather than their goadiness.

Other than that, loads of it annoys me but I don't comment on it cos it's pretty low, as OP says.

I once got pulled up in RL for pronouncing chorizo correctly!

I'm the worst typist going and I dont punctuate at all, or use capitals, yet it drives me nuts when people write of instead of have here, eg. I would of gone out, seriously does my box in but I've got a cheek I know.

They do it to me, I don't mind, I'd rather know.

^^ What Chipping said.

I do find myself muttering at the screen "It's could have, have, not of, have." on more than one occasion but I would never dream of actually pointing it out to the poster unless they themselves are being an arse, in which case I might make an exception.

I have seen people point out quite nicely that a great mass of text would be easier to read if divided into paragraphs. And it's true. I confess that I've often given up on trying to decipher anything that's just too much effort.

What's the form on someone re-posting the OP, with the paragraphs done for them? Have see that too.

It can be incredibly distracting. Particularly the paragraph thing, if it's one huge post then it's less likely people will read it and reply so it makes sense to ask them to edit it?

OP YANBU. You've probably all seen the 'inspirational women' thread this morning about a poster's dispair at her DD's inspirational women all being from TOWIE or somesuch and unfortunately the poster spelt inspirational incorrectly, and the very first reply was just to make a dig about this without really contributing anything else.

It's fine to seek clarification if the mistake changes the tone or meaning of the post,eg a missing 'not' but simply criticising often inconsequential errors, half of which will be fucking bastard Apple ipad autocorrects, is really not on.

I'm shocked at the number of people on here who think it is acceptable to pull people up on inconsequential errors in SPaG. Especially as the site is otherwise very inclusive and many posters fall over themselves to make allowances for anyone with special needs etc, but it would seem that this courtesy is not extended to spelling mistakes.

The post may not be in perfect English, but the poster's first language might not be English, they may be dyslexic, or have not had a good education due to family problems or a hundred other reasons. Or they could be in a difficult part of their life and be looking for help. What they certainly don't need is to be bullied, because that what it is, over their lack of perfect written English.