Is correcting someone's grammar a personal attack?

[Xanthippe1]

Should of
I said "should have"

Deleted - is that a personal attack because I can see a lot worse on here.

Teachers correct grammar all the time

Posts correcting someones SPaG should always be deleted. I'm glad MNHQ agrees.

Which talk guideline does it break?

I agree with MNHQ, it could come across as a personal attack. You don't know anything about that person's background, they could have dyslexia for example.

This is a chat site, people sometimes chat and get things wrong, if you know the gist of the poster, correcting them is just being pedantic imo.

Sometimes though it does help to clarify what is being said. Apostrophes are there for a purpose and meaning can be obscured if they are not present. Using the wrong spelling for a word can confuse the reader. .

Hi OP,

If you have a look at the general Ps and Qs in our Talk Guidelines, you'll see that there are reasons for removing posts that fall outside of the personal attack category.

In particular, we ask posters to bear in mind the following:

"We'd appreciate it if you could use the same courtesy when posting messages on Talk as you would use when speaking to someone face to face. Please do bear in mind how difficult this parenting business can be, and if there's one thing all of us could do with, it's some moral support."

https://www.mumsnet.com/i/netiquette

So while we don't specifically mention spelling and grammar corrections in our guidelines, we do ask everyone to consider how their posts might come across to others.

I have some SPAG feedback if you want it.
3 apparently - but 2 are subjective

From the Guidelines -

We'd appreciate it if you could use the same courtesy when posting messages on Talk as you would use when speaking to someone face to face

All fine and well, however, it goes both ways. If someone says "should of" to me in a face to face conversation, then yes, I absolutely will not hesitate to correct them.

This is notionally an English-speaking forum. As such, it's just courtesy to use intelligible English.

Feel free, always happy to learn and if it makes you feel better about yourself ….

In that case - AIBU should be full of deletions
And I might not be a courteous person

That's subjective

I think whether it’s in “the spirit of the site” slightly depends on the board.

If someone is having a rant on AIBU about some aspect of daily life that winds them up then it can be tempting and/or feel reasonable to point out that they also make mistakes. If someone’s post feels supercilious, then correcting their grammar is just meeting like with like.

However, if someone’s post is asking for advice about something personal and sensitive to them, correcting their grammar is a dick move that risks derailing the thread. I don’t think it’s particularly difficult to tell the difference either. There’s a board called Pedants’ Corner where this is welcome, but if you’re posting about the mental health of your teenager then you deserve to be met with compassion not a spelling lesson. I never think less of the poor speller; it’s the posters who correct them that I think have made twats of themselves.

Arguably it’s more rude to write something and not check your spelling and grammar before posting it.

It forces the readers to make assumptions about what is meant, or to mentally correct the mistakes.

It's not something I've ever seen done in good faith. Maybe it would be fine on something like a thread where I'm asking people to critique my first draft of a letter that I'm sending in to my local paper or something. Let's be honest here, it's always done as a dig at someone.

It won't make me feel better - just a free service

But if you don't want it, that's fine

Because anyone posting on Mumsnet is long past being in an educational setting and has therefore gone into their adult life completely oblivious to the fact that the spoken word "should've" is a contraction of "should have" and isn't written "should of".

I distinctly remember learning this at school - but not from a teacher, from a classmate with a look of utter disdain on her face as she expressed surprise that a fellow pupil had written "should of" instead of "should have" in a piece of work. I hadn't known the correct form either, and fortunately wasn't on the receiving end of her distain, but it made such an impression that it's stuck with me ever since. And that's what I think of whenever I see a poster correct another's grammar on Mumsnet - not that it's a personal attack but if no one ever points out your error you'll never be aware of it and won't have the opportunity to learn the correct grammar.

OP seems to have no full stops on their keyboard.

I think it's tedious, petty and unnecessary and probably a bit rude. I roll my eyes whenever I see someone doing it.

It’s damn rude and utterly unnecessary. It’s like interrupting a conversation about world affairs to tell a random person/client/neighbour that their dress and jumper don’t match. It’s like standing in a bus queue talking about the weather with a new mum and suddenly remarking on what a big nose her baby has. It’s like going, ‘Eww, you stink!’ when passing a tourist outside Harrod’s. Resist the impulse to behave this way. It does you no favours. It makes you sound most unlikeable.

Nor do you

It's designed to humiliate someone . Having bad grammar is no reflection on a persons intelligence .It's my pet hate and often done to try and shut down a persons opinion when no other arguments exists . Bad grammar exists for many reasons .I have got terrible grammar . I refuse to let pedantic arseholes get away with it .

I'm not complaining about other posters SPaG.

My communication skills must be worse than I thought they were if you didn’t understand that I said I wanted your feedback. Please help me improve that post too so that it is clearer.

I think general corrections are fine but if it's against a pacific person it's a problem.

I don't believe there is any need to go to the lengths of deleting entire posts because of poor grammar or unintelligible gibberish, but if the site insists upon courtesy being at the forefront, then it's just courteous to use intelligible English to begin with and they have no business deleting posts highlighting or correcting people failing to do so.