Do you enjoy correcting people when they make a mistake in writing, or do you feel it's your duty?

I wouldn’t use the word enjoy. There aren’t many occasions I correct what people write.

I correct my husband if he asks me to read something over that he is sending to someone else.

I correct people who spell Sumter County wrong if someone else hasn’t already in the Facebook group for my community. New people here write Sumpter.

I’ve corrected a friend of mine twice who says and writes the word irregardless, but to no avail, so I’ve let that drop.

I correct a friend of mine who publishes books (I don’t see how her editor misses some of the stuff) and if she has a mistake on her website. Actually, more than one friend who has mistakes on their websites.

All those corrections are to be helpful to the person writing.

I think it’s being helpful to let someone know they have made a mistake. How would they be able to correct it if they don’t even know it happened?

No. If I had any interest in cracking knuckles over grammar or spelling, I’d teach grade school English. In the main, I don’t envy our mods. Frankly, I don’t believe them excessive in their zeal at enforcing “writing standards”, with the probable exception of some snitch complaining and forcing their hand.

If I think it will help someone else, I’ll tell them. Otherwise I don’t bother.

Neither. As long as people get their thoughts across coherently, I could care less.

No. And I don’t even do that either unless someone asks me to.

Here in Flutherland, no.

In printed or web-based stuff (like the local newspaper’s website, or a magazine website, where there are supposed to be editors), then yes.

Neither really, but to me, it feels a bit like watching someone whose drink is spilling or their fly is unzipped and they don’t know about it, except worse because they may keep making the same mistake until someone points it out.

Once I came across a buy / sell / site. In the description the author of it wrote “You can sale anything.” I brought it to their attention….that was people’s introduction to the page!!
She just shrugged her shoulders like “Who cares!” and didn’t correct it.

@Dutchess_III Wow. See, that sort of thing is challenging for me to relate to, and to not judge those people. I tend to avoid businesses with illiterate signs – especially deliberately or apathetically illiterate ones.

I can’t fathom it either.

“It used to be we thought that people who went around correcting other people’s grammar were just plain annoying. Now there’s evidence they are actually ill, suffering from a type of obsessive-compulsive disorder/oppositional defiant disorder (OCD/ODD). Researchers are calling it Grammatical Pedantry Syndrome, or GPS.Jun. 24, 2012”

Grammar sticklers may have OCD | Illinoishttps://blogs.illinois.edu › view

It is required by law.

It depends on the severity and the situation @Inspired_2write.

If you wrote better, people will better consider what you’re saying.

BTW, “Just wondering?” is not a question.

“Enjoy”, no. But I’m willing to do it if asked. I will correct submissions from my employees at work (and I often ask for a second pair of eyes when I draft something), and if a family member or a friend asks me to proof something they’ve written, I will do that.

Otherwise, I only jump in in public or on public forums to correct proper nouns, for example, and only if and when the situation warrants. But for other grammatical errors, I let it be.

I am a language teacher so I have to correct my students all the time. It is hard not to do it outside work, but I wouldn’t call it correcting, I just let people know the right way assuming they made the mistake because they didn’t know.

Both.

@Yeahright we may tell them the right way but they’ll keep doing it the wrong way.

I prefer someone correcting me rather than letting an error in one of my posts stand as a testament to my carelessness or ignorance for all eternity.

Please let me know. I’m a big boy and can take it with no ill effects.

Me too @LuckyGuy.

Better writing means better communication, and communication is what words are for. Correcting people means they can do better next time, which is better for everyone. Getting annoyed at corrections and refusing to improve oneself is just stubbornness and ego.

@Inspired_2write I assume the page you were attempting to link is this one. It’s a joke article. There’s no such thing as the Journal of Syntactic Cognition, the image is stolen from a different study and given inaccurate labels, and the authors both have joke names (which was even more obvious before the blog was edited and “Maledict” was changed to “Malevich”).