When is it appropriate to correct someone?

[ItsFineReally]

Prompted by "Should I of gotten?"...

I am aware that if a post can be easily understood, despite spelling and grammatical errors, it's generally considered poor form to point out those mistakes.

Threads being derailed by multiple posters all making the same (but irrelevant to the issue) point can be frustrating as a reader. This must be moreso the case for the OP whose a genuine problem may be being overlooked while this is going on.

But... at what point is the error so egregious as to make it appropriate to correct someone? For instance, is pointing out that "lose" is the correct word, not "loose," ever helpful? Should errors be left uncorrected on social media altogether, or are there cases where it’s necessary to address them?

What’s your personal threshold for when you feel compelled to make a correction?

I have a very dear friend who isn't well educated. She went to live in Italy where she learned to speak Italian very well. However, I could correct her written Italian occasionally, although I don't speak Italian, because she had never learned grammar at all, neither in English nor Italian, and sometimes her adjectives didn't agree with their nouns. She didn't know what an adjective was, let alone that it had to agree with its noun.

It wasn't her fault in any way; she had taught herself Italian as an adult with no teaching input at all, which is quite a feat. And her lack of education was because she was busy learning to be a ballerina - a soloist in 2 or 3 very prestigious companies.

I love grammar and have pedantic tendencies, but I think it's really important to understand that language is always evolving. The rules of grammar are supposed to reflect usage, not constrain it

This, absolutely. A shame bomb is exactly what it is. I don't believe that a stranger correcting someone's language on a forum like this (or on social media) improves people's language. It simply makes the person doing the correcting feel good and the person on the receiving end feel bad. It achieves nothing.

People only correct mistakes on MN to feel superior.

This.

I would only correct something if I am proofreading it for someone. I'm great at spotting other people's errors but really bad at spotting my own 😂

That's the same for everyone. You see what you expect to see, not what's actually there...

I'm certainly not perfect and routinely trample over what others would consider correct usage. I start sentences with 'and' and end them with prepositions.

@ItsFineReally - these are ancient old 'rules'. They haven't been a thing for at least a generation, so please don't worry about them.

The only appropriate situations to correct are if the setting is educational or a work setting where the language accuracy matters

This suggests to me that accuracy doesn't matter outside these settings, which saddens me because losing nuances impoverishes us all.

How do you know why people do it? My guess is that people do it for a variety of reasons.

I'm currently learning 2 languages (castellano and catalán) and because of that I welcome being corrected whether it's when I have written or have said something incorrectly. However, I am not so sure I would be quite so open to being corrected in English (my native tongue). Certainly I would only ever correct someone else if they had specifically asked for help.

On MN I usually assume that a lot of mistakes are due to autocorrect or typing fast on a small phone screen. However, I do agree with PPs, some very obvious grammatical errors do make my teeth itch but I have to just ignore it.

How would you correct someone's grammar without appearing to be superior?

‘Should I of gotten…’ is so completely horrible and wrong, I’m not surprised people commented. But I appreciate it’s not usually appreciated to correct awful grammar.

Only relatives,yes, definitely itchy teeth and bleeding ears! I hate the use of hoovering for vacuuming. I think the worst is the use of "the ick" on MN, I feel quite nauseous reading it 🤣

It's certainly trickier in an online forum such as MN given there's an inherent lack of nuance and tone can be misinterpreted. But I've seen it done in (what I've assumed to be) a kindly manner. Typically as an aside to the main response.

However, I would say the only reason I use "it's and its" correctly is because someone pointed out my error and it's stuck ever since. And I was forever forgetting whether it was 'stationary' or 'stationery' until someone taught me to think of envelopes and trains. So being corrected has helped me in the past.

@Biffatcrafts Agree that it's helpful when learning another language. Must pick that up again in 2025!

On SM, only if it's unclear I think. For example if someone said "she borrowed me a hairdryer and now it's broken, who should pay" I genuinely wouldn't know who did the borrowing and who did the lending. But I still wouldn't correct them as such, I'd ask what they meant.

But generally speaking there would be more context that would make it clear anyway.

Or if someone rudely corrects someone else's post, but makes a mistake in their own. They've opened themselves up to that!

Oh, I don't worry. But that's partly my point: pedantry is quite personal, isn't it?
I feel a level of "if I know this then everyone should" about getting there, their and they're right, but can't get too exercised about certain things that might be ire-inducing to others.

Is it the case that spelling is prescriptive and therefore it's OK to correct that but not grammar which is more fluid?

No, it doesn't say accuracy doesn't matter at all. It says that other things - such as focusing on meaning, human beings, and respecting other people's dignity matters more.

Nuance is not the same as accuracy. It is not related to subtlety of meaning. If anything, correcting accuracy removes nuance, because it distracts from seeking to absorb the meaning and emotion of what someone is saying. It also tries to remove regional variations or clues from someone's language use that tell you about the person's culture, nationality or background. When people are being corrected it also suppresses what they say next, as they feel judged and try to limit what they say to simple stuff they know is correct. It tells people to keep their communication within narrower bounds. All these things kill nuance, rather than encourage it.

I would add that the errors that really make my toes curl are when someone has said they are a teacher, and yet have awful spelling and grammatical errors in their posts (which clearly are not due to autocorrect or bad proof reading). It makes me feel like a very grumpy old lady as I sigh inwardly and wonder what in the world are our children being taught!

@DuesToTheDirt oh yes, correcting someone's correction is surely OK!

I had that at work recently where I had put "[ ] and me" and they corrected it to "[ ] and I" - I was right the first time so told them so.

I've gave up on split infinitives around 30 years ago. They've now passed into common usage to such an extent that correct usage is now counter intuitive. I'm still trying to instil when to use fewer and less but increasingly this is a losing battle.

Isn't that always the way?!

"Should of" is something I really hope doesn't become acceptable.

I don't think it's the same as, for example, split infinitives or "less" instead of "fewer" because those still make sense.

"Should of" is just the wrong word. "I of done this" doesn't make sense and no one would write it. So why write "I should/could/would of done this"?
I'm not talking about in speech, because I think when talking people generally say something closer to "should've" with an "uh" sound anyway.

As an aside, even just typing the above my phone really refused to put "of" and corrected it to "have" several times even after I undid the correction. So I'm not sure how people type it so often even if they mean to!

This is what I struggle with. I actually agree with the general consensus that it's not appropriate to correct someone on SM, but I do feel that spelling and grammar has worsened over the last few years in general and I think that's really sad. If we're only correcting people in narrower and narrower circumstances - I believe even in schools, teachers are supposed to focus on the wider context rather than correcting every spelling mistake - then are we just allowing poor use of language to proliferate?

Impoverish is a really appropriate word to describe it.

Although I've read the above back and makes me sound like a Telegraph-reading, grumpy, old-fashioned pedant. And I don't consider myself to be!

To me it's all about communication and making yourself understood when it's on Mumsnet or similar. I hate it when the OP is perfectly clear really, but people pretend to misunderstand because they haven't punctuated or paragraphed very well, or their grammar is weak.

I also feel there must be a precision in the use of language when it's for work or similar, even in emails or quick messages. I correct people if I know them really well and know they won't take offence, or if it's to go into print eg. for students to use or clients to see. I've seen the most awful howlers go through into print in all sorts of places that should have had more checks before they went through.

Queries to check meaning are possibly ok on MN, if they are sincere and not passive agressive. Pretty much everything else is rude and unnecessary.

What I find most annoying on MN are posters attempting to assert their superiority by correcting language while failing to realise that usage varies throughout the U.K. and throughout the world.

The South of England is not the arbiter of “correct” English.

Scottish English, Irish English, Australian English, American English etc etc etc are all perfectly valid.