Unashamedly a TAAT!

[JudgeRinderSays]

AIBU to think MN should ban grammar and spelling pedantry on all forums except the one explicitly for this purpose.
It is so F*cking tedious!

YANBU OP

I was cringing for some people on that thread last night.

It just comes across as though they have such little importance in their real lives, that the only way they can feel superior, is to get a big red pen and mark the virtual spelling mistakes of strangers chatting on the internet.

Sad beyond belief and yes, it does make them come across as lacking in intelligence.

I can see your point MrsT - but on a sensitive thread where the op is asking for help?

And it's not just bad grammar that's frowned upon by some.
What about the people who say 'Hun' & 'lolz'

Sorry -quoting NoStrange there.

It is never polite to correct someone's grammar without invitation.
That is all.

It's not about being helpful though, not really. It's all about attempting to look superior.
Yy Pagwatch the 'helpful advice' never seems to be directed at posters who appear to be able to hold their own, always at those in vulnerable/difficult circumstances - kick 'em while they're down sort of thing.

To those in favour of correction, No has it spot on, would you dream of correcting a friend in similar circumstances?

And yy to pp. its all about trying to feel superior.
It should make ppl feel embarrassed by their own "trying to hard-ness" but i dont believe it does.
If i want my grammar corrected by a pedant Ill get a spot on QI.

Yes, the internet IS different to RL.

Lots of people aren't great at spelling or grammar. They aren't very articulate or confident when it comes to expressing themselves in the written word.

They still have every right to try to express themselves, though, and I would like to think MN is a place where that can be made possible without this ridiculous pettiness.

I have just checked the lyrics to Careless Whisper as I was sure he was singing "I should of known better than to cheat a friend" but he wasn't.
why do I always try to be lighthearted

I know people often say "should've" and people who are not great readers would think it is "should of". That is all it is.

MrsT, this is a TAAT where the pedants were not being helpful.
Iirc the first reply said 'should have have have ffs'. Very rude.

I correct my children when I'm helping them with homework or something like that, but if we're just chatting I'm not going to cut across them shrieking "it's have! HAVE HAVE HAVE!"

I wouldn't interrupt a conversation to point out someone has said pacific instead of specific or seen instead of saw. That would make me look like an utter bellend, just as it makes people who do it on a chat forum look an utter bellend

I find the threads where people continually correct THEMSELVES because of autocorrect on a phone/tablet to be most irritating, but I see why they do it now....

It's like etiquette isn't it? You have these people who are the Hyacinth Buckets of the world who would sneer at people who used the wrong fork or sat someone in the wrong place at a dinner party.

But the Queen is the ultimate arbiter of etiquette and apparently her cardinal rule is that one must not draw attention to the etiquette breaches of others. In fact I have read that if a guest uses the wrong fork she will do the same thing and has even drunk out of a finger bowl to save the blushes of a guest!

Grammar is the same, you can ask someone to clarify, if it's not clear. But to deliberately try and humiliate someone why drawing attention to their error says far more about what an unpleasant person the corrector is than the OP with errors. A good poster will always be able to rebut another poster using the content, it displays a crashing lack of intelligence to be unable to do that and resort to criticizing grammar as well. The smug, self satisfiedness of it, like knowing where to put an apostrophe somehow makes you super bright. It's pathetic really.

And I have to say there have been one or two occassions where I have seen it happen in really inappropriate situations, IIRC once it was a post about infant death and the first response was a whinge about grammar.

Not nice.

Am I the only one feeling the knead to make delibarate spelling and grammer mistakes from now on just to get up theyr'e noses?

(I would of cried if I'd of been the OP of that other thread)

Not going to be popular but here goes. If something was factually wrong, we would not bat an eyelid at it being corrected. I see people on MN constantly telling OPs they are wrong, disagreeing with them in the strongest terms- often using offensive language and being abusive. Grammar and spelling and written accuracy are important. I don't understand why someone noticing an error in that and pointing it out is offensive.

Personally, I can't see the point in doing that with what is clearly a typo but if someone is making simple errors they could put right if they knew, I don't see the problem. If I wrote something and put a figure of £50,000 for a costing in and someone told me the right figure was £80,000, I wouldn't be offended so why should someone telling me I have made a grammar mistake be any different? We all make mistakes. I wouldn't bother with trivial ones myself but then I wouldn't bother swearing and being offensive with someone just because I disagreed with them.

The truth is we are judged by the accuracy and quality of our literacy and numeracy skills. The new English GCSE awards 20% of marks for spelling, punctuation and grammar. There is a huge focus on it. If we have poor literacy skills we are disadvantaged in life. It's up to each of us to take responsibility for that- not to say it doesn't matter and get arsey about it. However, I agree that no one should be making someone else feel bad about it or being unkind. But it matters so let's stop pretending it doesn't.

That's possibly true ConfusedInBath but my grammar is appalling and I seriously doubt that avoiding have/of is the only reason that the pack fails to descend on me.

We both know it's not really about correcting errors and everything to do with picking on a poster. The have/of is just a clarion call to those who want to rip into someone.

Unfortunately my iPad has its own opinions on spelling and grammar.

I'll change it if I notice before I post, but it's forever adding apostrophes where I don't want them (its/it's, we're/were). It's also started changing commas to exclamation marks.

If it's autocorrected to something completely nonsensical I'll correct myself

It shouldn't matter on here.

If we judge others posts and decide whether to listen to the point they raise or the question they ask with kindness and respect or with derision and contempt, purely upon whether they say 'shoould of' or should have' then we have lost much in our judgement.

And 'should of/ should have' is absolutely not comparable to making a mistake between a cost of £50,000 and £80,000.

Fair enough Lulu, but if they're so pedantic and have such high standards they'll have read the full thread and noticed the fifty other posters berating correcting the op, therefore shouldn't feel the need to add their own tuppence worth, surely?

Or, perhaps, those types of posters see only the mistake and as their opinion is so very important they don't bother to read the full thread, and rush like a demented bullfrog to have a crack at the op?

But the Queen is the ultimate arbiter of etiquette

I live in a republic does that mean it is a free for all for us .

Agree with MoanCollins. Well said.

Lulu it's one thing correcting a factual error which could totally send respondents down the wrong track, and another thing entirely to start nit picking about words being mis-pelled.

In real life if someone said 'the average age for getting married is 25' and someone chipped in and said 'I think it's 28 actually' that wouldn't sound rude. However, if someone said 'I should of thought of that' and someone said 'It's I should have thought of that' they would sound both rude and patronising.

lulu this is a forum for fun and support, this is not real life. What matters in real life, in professional life, in home life is not what matters on Mumsnet. I do not need anyone to point out my many spelling and grammar mistakes on Mumsnet in order that I can improve in a professional capacity. I have proof readers and editors to help with that.

Ive been treated to the snarky end of some judgy bitchplops people's nasty stick (I lightheartedly used the word 'Gawjus' in a title thread). Nice thread too, with pics of sunsets, spoiled. It made me feel bad and Olivia changed the title for me.
I decided then and there to never ever make a comment on someone else's use of language.

Yes I absolutely agree. These posts making fun of spelling mistakes and grammatical errors should be reported and removed. It is not acceptable.