To sometimes hate grammar pedants ***message edited by a MNHQ pedant***

[Soubriquet]

There are people pouring out their troubles and woes to have someone come along and say
“Actually OP. Yabu. Because it’s I went to the store not I gone to the store. “

They add nothing to the conversation but just strong arm their grammar into a thread where it isn’t needed

Split infinitives are no longer considered to be incorrect.

Possibly useless fact: I was taught as a child that the only name ending in 's' where it is inappropriate to add an apostrophe and another 's' is the name of 'Jesus', as we weren't to mess with Jesus' name.

Haha! Well I guess they were right but for the wrong reasons as far as I understand it (rules about Biblical and Classical names).

I remember being in a short play at my church as a child which was something to do with trying to find Jesus’ birthday party. I had to go around saying ‘is Jesus’ party here?’ and the teacher told me I wasn’t allowed to say it with an extra S sound at the end. So I had to keep saying what sounded like ‘is Jesus party here?’ and I felt really silly.

I write in pigeon due to phone key board, it also changes my words even if I re type when I press send its again put back the original bloody word it thought I wanted.

Phone key board hobbles me and I also missed out on important grammar foundations at school. It really annoys me when someone critises but doesn't actually say what the problem is.. Eg op do x..

Then at least I know what I've done I'm happy to be corrected but not by someone trying to get one up due to my poor grammar + phone.

So I had to keep saying what sounded like ‘is Jesus party here?’

Where I'm from, Jesus party would likely be considered a moderately successful political movement with progressive goals.

Although I’m a fully paid-up pedant, I’ve only ever corrected anyone once, on a different forum, when a poster had corrected somebody else - and made a basic mistake in their own post. I will admit that I enjoyed that. 😂

However I do sometimes wonder whether people who make basic mistakes because of e.g. poor teachers, or the sort of teachers who were told that such things didn’t matter any more, would actually like to know where they’re going wrong with basics.

I once read a post (different forum) where someone said it was impossible to know where to put an apostrophe because it was a complete mystery to him, and obviously far too complicated for anyone normal to understand.

Such a shame, when it really is so straightforward - as long as someone can explain such things properly. I say this as someone who used to teach such things to (mainly) speakers of Arabic, who never had problems once we’d worked through a session on whatever it was.

What irritates me about MN is that it's apparently fine to be really critical of someone's cleanliness, housework standards, driving, child raising methods, cooking, etc etc - even when it completely derails the thread - but an absolutely heinous offence to have trouble with understanding a post because of the poor English used. Surely if it's poor manners to pick someone up on grammar, it's equally poor manners to criticise their housekeeping?

I agree that you shouldn't pick someone up on it if, for instance, they're posting about a serious or delicate situation. However, I will admit to diving in if it's someone whittering on about the children of today, poor educational standards etc. I especially point it out to people who bang on about dreadful forrins; it seems to me you can't reasonably claim to be proud of being Englilsh whilst trashing the language.

@TerrifiedandWorried

Split infinitives are no longer considered to be incorrect.

They still sound really ugly, though, and are pretty easy to avoid.

Jesus Party sounds like a pop group from the early 1990s!

I am Dyslexic and for 20 years worked in a profession which requires impeccable grammar and spelling.

I would never dream of correcting someone but was in the recovering end plenty of times. Luckily for me I stopped giving a shit

Not 'in the recovering end' as that would be weird. The receiving end was what I was in.

Or on, ffs, this thread has cursed me.

I speak three other languages, and although English isn’t my first I have studied in it to a postgraduate level. My grammar is usually good and I can switch from a colloquial style to formal nowadays.
I’m pretty open to discussing grammar and I don’t mind correction-if they have a point. I still have some issue with articles and comma placement in particular.
However 90% of the time I find the ‘grammar pedant’ isn’t the cleverest themselves. They just think they are amazing as predictive text used ‘your’ instead of ‘you’re’ after a finger slip and they spotted it. They then go on and ON about it. They tell everyone what a pedant they are, they get superior about it and take it to the point where you want to point out in terms of general knowledge they are one of the stupidest people you’ve ever met. Or they have the social skills of a plank of wood and maybe some time focused on that area of development would be of benefit.

Can you tell I know a few 😂

What is a split infinitive?

I do get your point - I don't see how a post pointing out that it's "Social services ARE going to visit, not going to come visit" is particularly helpful. But there are some posts on here where the grammar and spelling mistakes/ malapropisms are so bad that you can't actually understand what is being said or meant by the post, and in that case I think it's only fair to clarify. In particular the wrong use of borrow/ lend can be confusing

@JovialNickname any examples? I very rarely have trouble understanding an OP.

I have been on MANY internet forums over the years and I have NEVER seen a post as you describe OP, a pedant correcting someone who is "pouring out their troubles and woes".

I do see it frequently where someone is pretending to know a whole bunch of stuff they know nothing about (Dunning Kruger type) reeling off numerous sentences that begin with the word "fact" and end in gibberish - it's then pretty funny when someone points out they don't even have a grasp of simply grammar.

You’ve never seen it?

You obviously haven’t been looking hard enough

A split infinitive is when you insert an adverb in between the 'to' and 'verb'

Star Trek is the classic example - to boldly go...

That's a split infinitive, because the 'correct'* version would be 'to go boldly'

• I think the use of the split infinitive is not always seen as incorrect these days.

I assumed that the question was a genuine one, btw, @Soubriquet!

Thank you. And yes it was

It’s been a long time since I went to school and I can’t remember most of it

Split infinitive:

@nith - They still sound really ugly, though, and are pretty easy to avoid. I think that's far too much of a generalisation. I think you are deaf to potential for stress and rhythm in language - Star Trek's classic "to boldly go" puts the boldly in a place of emphasis; "to go boldly" sounds lame!

They sometimes are better than the alternative: "Covid cases are expected to more than double" - how would you avoid the split there?

And they sometimes help with clarity: "I'm visiting the town to only observe the culture" is making it clear that I'm doing no activity other than observing, whereas "I'm visiting the town only to observe..." might mean I'm not visiting places outside the town, "...to observe only the culture" emphasises I'm not observing anything else.

@BIWI - I don't think it's ever been incorrect, it's just some "authorities" made a rule that they forced on other people (possibly based on Latin grammar where the infinitive is a single word so can't be split).

I used to have a friend who would correct me every time I said ‘if I was’ and tell me it should be ‘if I were’, which was both irritating and also wrong!

'If I were' is the correct use of the subjunctive, I believe, but why we even have the subjunctive in English is beyond me, so there is no excuse for trying to insist others use it!

If a poster asks about or about wording fair enough to correct. If it truly means that the post could mean different things and the context does not make it clear also ask poster to clarify.

Otherwise I don’t think that posters Spag should be corrected. This isn’t just on posts where the subject is serious or poster is emotional. It also goes for run of the mill posts, including ones you disagree with. This is not a school or workplace.
The problem with correcting even everyday posts is that the thread may be derailed or the poster or other readers may just decide MN is not for them at all or not somewhere that they can risk discussing something serious for them.

I am pretty sure the post is littered with mistakes as I attended a school where they were all for creativity and did not correct Spag. It was a mistake, and had not served me well in work, but should make no difference on MN unless I’m in pedants corner.

@BoyTree

I used to have a friend who would correct me every time I said ‘if I was’ and tell me it should be ‘if I were’, which was both irritating and also wrong!

'If I were' is the correct use of the subjunctive, I believe, but why we even have the subjunctive in English is beyond me, so there is no excuse for trying to insist others use it!

But the FirewomanSam's example was a case where "if I was" was correct - describing something in the past that did happen, not a hypothetical situation where the subjunctive might be used.

I absolutely hate it when a poster replies with faux naivete, pretending they have misunderstood the OP due to them using the 'wrong' (usually regional or colloquial) word. It's generally along the lines of

OP: My brother lent £500 off me and won't pay it back
Twat poster: I'm not following, why can't you pay him back? He lent it to you in good faith.
many posts later
Twat poster: Oh you mean your brother BORROWED £500 from you? It's soooo hard to understand your posts.

The meaning is clear from the context you sneery twat.