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

So you don't know if you are breaking talk guidelines every time you post because you can't define Spirit of the site

You're repeating yourself now.

I refer you to my earlier reply.

Or would you like me to report your question to MNHQ and ask them to come along and define it for you?

I don’t see point of correcting minor SPaG on MN. It’s almost always done to score superiority points and has no useful purpose unless a poster has specifically asked for it i.e. “I have written this letter to my DC’s school, please could someone check it for me and let me know if there are any mistakes”.
That’s not to say I don’t have a little snarky chortle to myself if a poster I think is a dick makes a SPaG error, but I don’t bother to correct it. MNHQ make it quite clear being a snarkypuss can fall foul of Talk Guidelines if someone bothers to report and like it or not, they can delete and ban for anything they wish.
Plus, if someone can’t read “Should of” and automatically correct it in their head to “Should have” then they don’t really have any business openly criticising how other posters use language.

Edited because my oh-so-superior SPaGgy brain apparently refused to write “Should of”. Oh, the trials of being a Clever Little Sausage! <sigh>

You've already been told why by various people.

Honestly, you and the other pendants on this thread are coming across as pedantic for no good reason, and rather unpleasant. There are another couple of reasons for you.

“Courtesy” is an entirely subjective concept though, isn’t it?

Well if it is truly subjective and nebulous, it has no business being the backbone of talk guidelines. Understandable then why it's presumably fine to be discourteous and post barely intelligible English, but apparently a huge no-no to be discourteous in kind and highlight it. 😐

You seem invested - it would be a good Site stuff thread

So you can't define Spirit of the site

I think your thread is against Talk Guidelines and a personal attack

Would you speak like this in real life?

So so tempted

It's weird to dig at posters for seeming 'invested' when you were the only person left repeatedly posting in the end on your other thread, with very few people bothering to reply any more.

Surely this is why you start them?

You either want replies or you don't?

Report it then.

Just replying to people in the spirit of the site

Meanwhile

https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/site_stuff/5597053-the-spirit-of-the-site-what-is-it

I used to work as an editor for a news organisation that insisted on impeccable SPAG so it’s hard for me to ignore some of the examples on here. I do restrain myself on the whole as long as the meaning is reasonably clear.
But the decline in standards of grammar is startling, which I think may be attributed to poor teaching with some teachers lacking understanding and hence reluctant to teach it. Which they justify by saying it’s unnecessary or unimportant these days. But that surely depends on how much you want your written efforts to be clear and easily understood.

The Mumsnet Annual Accounts are interesting reading

65 employees'
8.9 million posts in 2025
24,384 posts per day
1,016 posts per hour
17 posts per minute
One post approximately every 3.5 seconds

1.1 billion page views
Session 9.5 minutes
6.1 million monthly unique users
£2.62 million profit

I think the moderators are busy

application-pdf

I can’t speak for all schools but mine is very committed to teaching SPaG. We spend a lot of time on “Should have/ would have/ their / there / they’re”.
I leave the purple pen at work, however.

Purple?

What is this woke nonsense?

In my day it was a red pen, and 10 of the belt for inappropriate apostrophisation.

😛

Off topic - but red is good.

I used to show good work from other pupils (not my class) on the Whiteboard - as well as examples where the class could correct them

Purple Pen for editing and correction, Green Pen for marking. We don’t even buy Evil Judgy Red Pens for any reason (felt tips excepted), less the harshness causes irrevocable SPaG trauma.

I was too posh for my school according to some of the TAs
They had a different accent and dialect to me - and some interesting ways of speaking

Isn't purple just going to be the new red for generation A 😁?

At least correcting grammar has come back into fashion. It was barely done when I was at secondary school in the 00s. I don't know if the thought at the time was that word processing would mean it was obsolete or it was seen as too negative. When I started work it was something I had to re-learn from what I remembered at primary.

I bet you don't even give out gold stars for excellence any more lest the non-recipients be made to feel like the failures they are 😛

I find it astounding that moderators have time to be intervening in someone having their feels hurted by having their spelling corrected.

Are people reporting such transgressions, which are then reviewed and determined to be inappropriate for such an estabishment? Or are moderators trawling around, looking for completely random not-at-all-related-to-advertisers threads to bump and spot this intolerant abuse for themselves?

People report because it’s a nasty thing to do @kittensinthekitchen and has been pointed out many times, that it can put women off posting for help and advice.

It’s humiliating and unnecessary and no, it doesn’t mean that poster will suddenly learn what they’ve been unable to all their life.

I report because correcting someones SPaG is a dick move.

Its also an area where clearer policy on a middle way is possible.

Someone writes lengthy post with a missing apostrophe - first post ignores all the content but the missing apostrophe = dick move

Poster A is followed by Poster B across threads with B criticising SPAG = dick move

Defusing a snarky poster by drawing attention to their own imperfection = been a standard tactic acceptable under netiquette for decades.

Trying to clarify a post which is hard to comprehend due to txt spk, lack of punctuation and major grammatical errors = not a dick move and likely to increase sensible responses.

SPAG is there for a reason - it helps with understanding, especially to people for whom English is a second language and especially in text medium.

I've always found it interesting that the "don't correct anything" supporters tend to be those who have benefitted from a good education in spelling and grammar themselves and whose own children are equally equipped.

Ah I see, actually this Is more about you thinking that they are wrong and you are right not about whether you did the wrong thing or not.