When you correct someone on spelling or punctuation, are you doing it to actually be helpful or is it a roundabout way to feel superior?

And PLEASE lets be honest.

The only time I really correct peoples grammar is when I know they are a non-English speaker. So I do it to be helpful

If I’m debating with a trump supporter I do it to prove that I’m superior. That’s really about the only time I do it.
Why is it, without fail, trump supporters have such horrible grammar and spelling skills?

…but I am superior

Unless I’ve been asked to proofread, I never correct anyone’s writing. To be honest, I think doing that is a bit lame. What am I bragging about? That my parents were fairly educated and I was lucky enough to have access to a classroom, books, and teachers?

I love to read and write, but it bothers me that our culture is so fixated on the written word. People can have powerful minds and great ideas while possessing only rudimentary writing skills.

I do it to be helpful, but it’s hard to not come off as a smart-ass.

@longgone I agree with you. I usually ignore any mistakes on social media because even I don’t care enough to correct most errors. I use some sites though where I connect with someone who speaks a language I want to learn, and in return I help them with some English. So that’s the only time I personally correct things. People correct me and I just think they are annoying. Like, I don’t treat Facebook comments as formal writing projects so I couldn’t care less.

It is especially annoying if somebody wants to “debate”. Like you seriously couldn’t have come up with an actual rebuttal? I always assume I won when all they can say is “you’re*” or somet tiny little correction. But I also try my best to stay away from online debates, talk about a waste of time

I’m trying to be helpful.

When I’m trying to feel superior, I’m more direct. ~

@SQUEEKY2 “When you correct someone on spelling or punctuation, are you doing it to actually be helpful or is it a roundabout way to feel superior?”

If you correct someone’s orthography then is it to be helpful or to feel superior?

The latter is an inadvertent concomitant.

I don’t do it anymore, but it still bothers me to see it. You have to choose your battles, I guess.
It’s not a superiority thing, but I was more annoyed at the lack of effort.

I understand now that a person’s individual phone settings may not correct everything for them, and it’s faster to type the message out and send it fast because it’s not a big deal.

I don’t correct others’ spelling or punctuation unsolicited. I will correct someone’s pronunciation mid-conservation and that is to be helpful, especially if it’s likely they will utter the word again in the same conversation.

At times if it doesn’t make the message come across clear enough then its used to assist in that

process otherwise its off putting to see that ALL they got out of the message was to correct

mistakes instead of understanding the point.

Imagine if standing in front of a person that cuts you off to correct your grammar…that person

who corrects will lose a good friend regardless of grammar errors.

It blatantly shows an intolerance for others .

Gawd knows what people have been through in there lives where Education was not

provided and they had to survive at the cost of incorrect Grammar!

If one knew the secret painful history of people that they meet that survived, across they

would think twice BEFORE correcting another in that way.

As long a s one understood the message and not the spelling or grammar that is whats really

important.

Example: simple message”

’” Do you sea”

is understood.

I will sometimes PM a correction to the asker (if it’s a particularly silly or egregious mistake) so they don’t get reamed on the open thread. Otherwise, if the meaning is clear, I don’t care. Autocorrect, predictive text, haste, and big fingers on small devices can make for some interesting mistakes.

@canidmajor
Yes I understand the predictive text problems.
I just upgraded to a new cellphone and having major problems with predictive text errors.
I hate it on my phone..anyway to get it taken off my cell phone? Maybe in settings?

@Inspired_2write…it has nothing to do with a lack of education and everything to do with family and culture and a lack of intelligence. I have friends on Facebook who literally sat next to me in English classes, who had the same education I had, who can’t write sentence using correct grammar and spelling. It is because their parents can’t.
My folks both came from a very impoverished background and worked their way up to upper middle class and they saw to it that we spoke and wrote in an educated way.