Would you want to know if you were wrong about something?
And I’m not talking about OPINION, like “Hugh Laurie is the hottest man on television.” Because while maybe you feel that is a FACT – and while maybe I would AGREE with you – it’s not a fact. It’s an opinion.
For this post only, I’m talking about real facts. You know, 2+2 = 4. Eighty-four degrees is hotter than 10 degrees. Crows can fly. Yada yada yada. (It is more difficult to come up with random facts than I anticipated.)
Specifically, I’m talking about grammatical and usage facts.
You see, sometimes I encounter people who misuse words or use poor grammar or say things incorrectly. (Honestly, anyone who uses Facebook encounters people like this.)
And I’m not talking about the occasional misstep. No one is perfect; we all make mistakes.
I’m talking about the repeated misuse of a specific word, term, or part of speech.
The kind that makes you cringe… and possibly begin to respect the other person a little less. (POSSIBLY. I am not going to COMPLETELY lose respect for you if you say “all intensive purposes.” But it’s not going to HELP matters, is what I’m saying.)
Internet, I am no expert on ANYTHING.
But I do a) have a degree in English, b) have a master’s degree in writing, and c) love the English language and all its quirks with a deep passion.
Plus, I make a living as a writer and editor.
So I think we can agree that I have some modicum of experience with writing.
(DISCLAIMER: I am not PERFECT. Do I know the difference between “who” and “whom”? Yes… but not well enough that I feel comfortable throwing out “whos” and “whoms” willy nilly.)
(DOUBLE DISCLAIMER: I am also fully capable of making mistakes. This blog is full of typos, which mock me every time I glance at an old blog post. Apropos of nothing, I recently became less able to spot blog typos. You may not know this [in fact, I don’t know how you WOULD know this], but I type out all my blog posts in a single Word document before I post them in WordPress. This document is currently made up of 728 pages and 219,000+ words. [Some have never seen the light of day. For which we should all be thankful.] [And now you are wondering what, if I have some sort of blog-post screening process, constitutes Unacceptable Content? Because have you SEEN some of the stuff that gets published here?]
Anyway. This document is 728 pages long. The other day, I was typing along as I am wont to do… and suddenly a box popped up, demanding my attention. It was Word, snootily informing me that there were too many typos for the Spelling and Grammar Tool to check. So if I wanted to know which grievous errors I was perpetrating on the written word, I would have to do it my own damn self. I don’t know if that last sentence is the least bit grammatically correct. But you know what? Word wouldn’t have known either.
Which is all a very long way of saying, TYPOS HAPPEN.)
(Weird Additional Parenthetical: For some reason, I can never spell “typo” correctly on the first try. Oh the irony!)
Plus, let’s all be fully honest here: A lot of us in the blogosphere twist grammar and usage and even the good ol’ English language to suit our own purposes. Which I like. I am a huge fan of the sentence fragment, for instance. And I derive great pleasure from beginning a sentence with a conjunction.
Somehow I have gotten deeply off track. Let’s see if we can rustle up some sort of a point here…
Oh yes. We were discussing the appropriateness of correcting someone.
I feel that, even if an honest-to-goodness EXPERT in something were to correct someone… He’d come across as a buttmunch. Maybe just a little bit of a buttmunch… But a buttmunch nonetheless.
For instance, if you were to be at a fancy paleontology cocktail hour (what?) and you were to mention that the brontosaurus is your all-time favorite dinosaur, and then a Nobel-prize winning paleontologist were to say, “Actually, there’s no such thing as a brontosaurus. The dinosaur you’re likely thinking of is called an Apatosaurus.” Well, even though he is an EXPERT and also RIGHT (to the best of my Wikipediaing knowledge), you might be a little taken aback and feel like he was a bit of a buttmunch to point out your mistake. Especially when you are all dressed up and feeling very posh and important to have been invited to a fancy paleontology cocktail hour in the first place.
You know what? I am realizing that maybe OTHER PEOPLE wouldn’t think he was a buttmunch! Maybe I am the one who gets all bent out of shape when people point out that I’m wrong. (I really hate being wrong.) (Not that it doesn’t happen. It DOES.) Maybe I am the one who feels like a buttmunch for believing something that was completely false… and so I project that buttmunchery onto the person who corrected me.
Although, in my own defense, let me tell you a short anecdote: I went to a chocolate shop with my husband the other day and I asked the salesgirl – who, by the way, really was a GIRL, and younger than me, and clearly hadn’t heard the rule about respecting one’s elders – for a pâte de fruit. (In this case, a little raspberry jelly wrapped in chocolate.)
And I pronounced it “pat duh froot” because – although I am fairly decent at French pronunciation – I sometimes feel like a pretentious jerk when I try to use proper French pronunciation around non-French speakers. (I really don’t know why. It makes me want to roll my eyes at myself.) (Although I then feel like an idiot when I’ve clearly mispronounced a French phrase.) (I can’t win.)
Plus, if you are speaking French to an English-speaker, you run the very real risk of getting a blank and/or annoyed and/or “you are a pompous ass” stare in return.
What I really want you to know is that I KNOW that “pâte de fruit” sounds something like “PAHT duh fwee.”
But I said it “pat duh froot” to the salesgirl for ease of understanding.
You know where this is going, right?
She looked at me and said, loudly and slowly, “Oh, you mean the Pah-TAY duh froo-EE?”
Which a) is a buttmunchy thing to say, right? Because I didn’t come to this chocolate shop to get a French lesson in the first place. And b) was NOT CORRECT.
Blargh. The only thing worse than being corrected is being corrected by someone who is incorrect.
I mean, if she’d said it correctly, in perfect French, I would have felt less annoyed at her for correcting me and more annoyed at myself for not saying the damn thing correctly in the first place.
Or if I’d butchered the phrase so horribly that she was having to strain her little brain to figure out what I meant, well, maybe then her question would be acceptable just for the sake of clarification.
But to correct me – when it was CLEAR what I was GETTING AT – and to be WRONG… Well. That’s a whole new level of buttmunchism.
Of course, there is a slightly-less-buttmuchive alternative to correcting someone. You know. When you follow-up the incorrect usage with the correct usage.
Person Who Is Wrong and Doesn’t Know It: “That’s a mute point, Dave.”
You: “I totally agree with you. That really IS a moot point.”
And perhaps this works once in a while. But in my experience, the Person Who Is Wrong and Doesn’t Know It will respond in one of two ways:
- He will remain completely oblivious to your correction.
- He will give you a strange look because he thinks YOU are wrong.
If this alternative fails, really, you are left with the option of either ignoring the mistake and going along as though it didn’t happen… Or correcting the person straight out.
Usually, I opt for the “ignore” option. If someone is going along with her life and she stumbles into one of those thorny grammatical briar patches, I will just sit back and wait until she stumbles out on her own.
Because when you get right down to it, listening to someone means not caring whether she uses “you and I” correctly. If you focus on the misuse of “you and I,” you are likely failing to focus on the listening part, which – I think we can all agree – is the listener’s most important role in a conversation.
Plus, the truth is – and what I am about to write deeply pains me, because I am a huge FAN of grammar and correct usage and all that jazz. There are rules specifically designed to make communication easy and clear. So why not adhere to them? – as long as you are being clear ENOUGH that the other person understands you… Well… Being incorrect is not THAT big a deal.
You saying “James went to the mall last night with Sarah and I” or “I felt so badly about not calling my grandmother on her birthday” may grate on the ear… But it doesn’t prevent me from understanding what you MEAN.
By the way, this is all coming about because I have a dear friend who happens to be a TEACHER of small children… and she makes one specific and jarring grammatical mistake all the time. Not just once. Not just in an email or Facebook message where formal rules are less important. But All The Time. And it concerns me. You know, FOR THE CHILDREN.
But still, I just cannot bring myself to correct her. It seems to violate the Unwritten Rules of Society.
You know who you can correct? Your kids. And your spouse.
Maybe that’s why people get married and have kids, now that I think about it. So they can correct others’ grammar without feeling like buttmunches.
Anyway, what I really want to know is, would you want someone to point out that you had made a mistake?
Like, if you were just living your life as though ravine was pronounced “RAH-vyne,” would you want someone to take you aside and gently let you know that you were wrong the whole time?
I think I WOULD want to know. (Although this is not an invitation to pick at my blog, Internet. See above RE: I already know I am not perfect.) It would be worse, I think, to blithely skip through life whilst wrong than to suffer the inidignity that is Being Corrected.
But, in true hypocrite fashion, I don’t think I would be at all comfortable correcting someone who was not my husband, my future hypothetical child, or my student. (And my clients, obviously. But they pay me to correct them.)
Oh, I totally know what you mean about on purpose butchering of french pronunciation. Definitely done that before.
Speaking of buttmunchers, the other day I was in the lab. There is no food and drink at the lab computers. So, because I follow rules perfectly, I ate my cookie over somewhere else. Apparently, someone had misplaced the trash can, so I just stuck the wrapper on top of my notebook and walked over to the computers. The wrapper fell off onto the floor, so I picked it up and put it on the counter so I wouldn’t forget to throw it away. A couple hours later, Mrs. Snooty Queen of the Lab came in and pointed at my wrapper and then my water bottle (which was on the floor where its supposed to be) and said, “Uh, no food or drink at the computers.” I said, “oh, its just a wrapper.” “Same thing.”
Really? An empty wrapper way to the side of the computer is the equivalent of me eating a cookie directly above the keyboard? Shame on your power trip, lab assistant, shame.
I HATE those situations where you are corrected or scolded simply because the corrector/scolder doesn’t have all the information. SO ANNOYING, especially for those of us who are consummate rule followers.
I think the problem here comes from having two CATEGORIES of things we might wonder if we should correct:
1. Things someone might not know (brontosaurus is the perfect example)
2. Things someone has already been told/taught, but has not retained (pretty much all grammar and spelling issues)
So even though “If you have any questions, contact Dave or myself” makes me want to stab someone, I know not to correct this: the person has already been taught and taught and TAUGHT that it’s “me” not “myself” or “I,” but they are either unable to retain that information or unwilling to apply it (I myself have a few areas where I know the rule but I either disagree or else prefer not to follow it).
Whereas if someone says brontosaurus, I MIGHT say “Oh! You know what I just found out about that?” Because that’s not a situation where they’ve been taught it already, and they might want to know to avoid feeling silly at that paleontology cocktail hour. But I would be very careful even so, because most corrections sound like corrections.
Yes, good point – some rules just don’t stick.
Yes yes yes. Tell me when I’m wrong. I feel like a total douche when I find out later that I’ve been doing/saying something wrong all along. HATE.
Also- I would like someone to explain to me how ANYONE who passed like the 6th grade cannot manage to use you’re/your and their/there correctly. It seriously almost makes me not want to be friends with people. That is FUNDAMENTAL GRAMMAR. FUNDAMENTAL I TELL YOU!
It makes me positively stabby.
I definitely know the different between you’re/your and their/there ( and even they’re!). But I also have a tendency to type very quickly, and not spell check when I’m typing to my friends on facebook. Before I know it, I’ve said “I’ll be their” and hit “enter” – muscle memory picked the most common spelling… and I have a tendency to watch the TV and not the screen when I’m typing. 🙂
I guess my point is – just because some one makes a typo doesn’t mean they don’t know the rules.
I think we can all agree there’s a difference between the occasional typo (and I’ve – to my HORROR – misused “they’re” at least once in these pages) and a genuine lack of understanding/caring about what’s correct. The former is forgivable; the latter is annoying.
I agree that it could sometimes be a mistake, but I was thinking in terms of the people (mostly on Facebook) who insist on doing it repeatedly, without fail. It’s almost like they really have no idea 🙂
I like how some people use all 3 of them, but always in the wrong context. If you are aware there are 3 versions, shouldn’t you be aware that there are times when one or the other is appropriate? Do you think you could be bothered to google it if you don’t know if you are using the correct one?
well said…fast typing can make for mistakes. it doesn’t mean you don’t know the rules… grammer police make me a bit cranky…
As a former English teacher (and a writing adjunct at a journalism college) I struggle with this, too. I’m not perfect. I enjoy breaking rules to make a creative-writing statement. However, I always taught my students that you have to know and understand the rule in order to break it. So…
That being said, I don’t correct most people. Except my husband. Who’s an engineer. In the Navy. It goes without saying his grammar is atrocious.
So I don’t know. I’m torn on this.
But what I do know is this: I like the word buttmunch. I need to use it more often.
It’s a sorely underused term.
I always want to know. I HATE making spelling and grammar mistakes, and I’d always want to be corrected.
Of course I, like you, never actually have the balls to correct OTHER people. I feel like a jerk.
I agree with Swistle somewhat, but I think that sometimes you have to judge for yourself. I know that it took me an embarassingly long amount of time to figure out the I/me thing, and I was so glad when I saw it addressed in someone’s blog a couple years ago because it made sense to me then like it hadn’t before. They weren’t correcting me, but if no one had said anything I would still be doing it wrong.
I try to think about the person’s future. Will they be embarrassed if they find out later that they were doing something wrong and no one told them? Could it cost them some kind of opportunity? My sister is attending college for the first time at the age of 22. She got a non-traditional high school diploma, and her spelling and grammar are atrocious. Her meaning comes across, but it’s all really bad. I don’t want to be the obnoxious one on facebook correcting all of her status updates, but I have to believe that this is at least somewhat carrying over to her school work, so maybe I should say something? So far I’ve offered to help her with papers if she wants me to.
I guess I would include siblings under the umbrella of people you can feel okay correcting. Because you are somewhat invested in their well-being, you know?
I think that the level of “buttmunchery” (I’m making up words… sorry….). I have known some people who are so humble and unassuming that even when they are “correcting” you, it doesn’t feel like it.
The other thing that influences buttmunchery level is how often some one does it.
I feel like adults (well… teenagers too), are too closed minded and self-centered. One person can’t known everything, and so I try to take “corrections” as ways to improve myself, rather than as something that I am wrong about. There are A LOT of things I don’t know about.
“One person can’t known everything, and so I try to take “corrections” as ways to improve myself, rather than as something that I am wrong about.”
THIS. Exactly.
It is kind of like telling someone else that their child is a brat. You just can’t do it without coming off like a jackass. It’s a sad state of affairs.
YES! Because one man’s brat is another man’s darling cutie pie.
I only correct people that I’m close to and only if I’m worried they might get made fun of in the near future for saying something so obviously incorrect. (For instance, butchering the pronunciation of a word or totally misusing it in an obvious manner.) I think that if you clearly have the other person’s best interest at heart, you are usually making the right choice. But, once again, I must know the person well enough to know if it’s in their best interest to tell them or to just let it go. Some people get very upset at being corrected. (Which makes me think of The Princess Bride… “Inconceivable!” “You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.”)
Personally, as embarrassing as it is to realize that you’re totally wrong about something, I would prefer to be corrected, but only by those I’m close to.
I’d only want to be informed I was wrong by certain people. Some people just have such a crappy, condescending way of telling you you’re incorrect. I’d rather go on with my incorrectness than hear it from them. I’m sure that’s terrible, but it’s true. However, from a person with good intentions who knows how to politely correct someone – sure, I would want to know. Or from a friend who will tell you you’re wrong and then laugh their rear off at you – that works for me too. It’s the smug “I know something you don’t know, you moron” people I don’t like.
I agree with Kristina – I would rather be told of my mistakes. I wouldn’t want you coming out infront of everyone and yelling them at me, but in private I wouldn’t mind it. Ok, that’s kinda a lie. My ego would be bruised a bit. I would rather have a slightly bruised ego over a big-impending-mistake-that-costs-me-a-fat-ugly-never-going-away-bruised ego.
I never have been one who follows the grammar rules well. I wish I was. I WISH I could write with such eloquence as you do. I’m sorry if my blog posts makes you twinge every once in a while 😉
So, this one girl in college, would always use the word “construe” because I think she thought it made her sound smart. We’d ask her if she wanted to go to dinner and she would say “I could be construed.” And finally, after a LONG time of this, my English major roommate told her that construe was not a synonym for convince, even if they do sound a little bit alike. But, did this stop her? NO. Instead she kept doing it and pretended that she had been doing it as a joke the whole time.
I think there are different levels of grammar. I write much more casually in blog posts and emails than I do in formal papers and business correspondence. But, I am driven crazy by blatant errors. The one that has been making me insane lately is the incorrect use of isle on blogs. So many things are happening to people in grocery isles lately. GRRR.
(P.S. I have some kind of spell check installed on my computer. It even checks comments. (It is currently telling me that GRRR is not a word.) I wish everyone would get this program.)
As a fellow English grad/writer-editor, I agree that people do not need to be corrected all the time. It’s rude, and just because I may roll my eyes when I read your FB post doesn’t mean I have the right to get out my glasses and grammar guide and tell you The Right Way.
I had an experience similar to yours in the chocolate shop. I was at a local Italian restaurant (very good food but we’re in a rural area so I can’t tell you HOW Italian the people in the back really are, or how long ago they made the trek from The Homeland to The Land of Opportunity). So I went to order the Chicken Caprese panini, and I pronounced it KAP RAY’ ZEE. The waitress looked at me and went, “Oh, the chicken CAP REES?” If you’re going to correct me, correct me when YOU’RE right and I’M wrong… not the other freaking way around.
CAP-REES? Oh lordy I would have died.
This reminds me of when I lived with this girl that thought she was a genius, but was actually pretty dumb. She was beautiful and her parents had money, though, so people let her get away with anything.
Anyway, my other roommate was talking about the red dipping sauce for breadsticks and called it Mah-rin-Ah-ra sauce. She asked him to repeat it, and then she said “Oh, you mean MARE-in-ARE-A sauce?” She also scolded him once for opening the dishwasher because he was “just lucky it wasn’t full of water!” Apparently she thinks the dishwasher works like a washing machine and fills up and then swishes around.
Needless to say we aren’t friends and I don’t live with her anymore (neither does he).
I read a lot of design blogs, and the number of people who do not know the difference between palette/palate/pallet is mindboggling. (I have never corrected anyone, because that would be pompous and buttmunchy, but still, EVERYONE IS USING THEM ALL WRONG. Ahem.)
Yes, I am convinced that you must be a terrible speller and lack any sense of grammatical propriety in order to be a design/fashion blogger.
What an uppity person I am tonight. . .
I would want to know if I was saying something wrong.
I like to think I have decent grammar most of the time.
Sometimes I have to say something out loud a few times to make sure I am saying it correctly.
There are alot of people who don’t know how to speek properly. They have awful grammar. I think to myself, do you not hear what you’re saying?
I remember we went out to eat and tired ordering
chicken cacciatore with my best Italian accent and totally butchered cacciatore. The waiter just laughed at me.
haha I love this post. One – because I speak French too and feel like a pompous ass to pronounce things correctly but I can’t imagine what non-lady-like words would pour out of my mouth if someone corrected me when i was trying not to be a jerk in the first place. Second – because you remind me so much of this friend of mine who always corrects our grammar. Actually she corrects everyone’s grammar. Sometimes it’s annoying but most of the time it’s pretty funny. And then you find yourself using proper grammar places you wouldn’t have before. And it always makes you think of her. Anyways, thanks for the fun post.
Ugh! I have two friends who say “supposably” instead of supposedly. It drives me bonkers. Also, people who mix up the spelling of where and were-for the love!
This one drives me nuts!! One of my coworkers says “supposably” and another — a WRITER — in e-mails uses “suppose to” (instead of “supposed to”). Stab, stab, stab!
I pride myself on having good grammar and spelling but I know I’m not perfect. I found out just a few months ago, for example, that I have been spelling “hilarious” wrong for my entire life. I have always used two Ls.
I SO know what you mean!! I have an undergraduate degree in Microbiology so I’ve taken a number of classes that range from pathogenic microbiology to virology to genetics of prokaryotic microbes (yeah, say that 3x’s fast) and CRINGE when I hear people incorrectly talk about viruses and bacteria as if a) they are the same b) they require the same course of treatment and c) suggest that antibiotics is the cure all to both. Like you, I am not perfect – but it’s amazing to listen to people talk about subjects they know zero about.
And yes, I would want to know 🙂
ps – I had a roommate that used the word supposably – and he would always say it super slow…..”SuuuPOSEably they are sleeping together….” he had no idea….hysterical!!!
I completely-100%-totally-completely would want to know if I was pronouncing something wrong, or using a word in the wrong context. How could anyone not, as long as it as pointed out tactfully, instead of, you know, buttmunchfully?
For instance, if I were a server at a restaurant, pronouncing Caprese incorrectly to every table, I’d want to be corrected so that I would STOP BEING WRONG EVERY DAY. I might be a little miffed at the time, but in hindsight, I’m sure that I would really appreciate that kind person who corrected me and helped to keep me looking like a fool.
I would totally liken this to having spinach stuck in my teeth, or say, tucking my skirt into my underoos or having TP stuck on my shoe. In a way, I’d almost prefer if if were a stranger who pointed it out….someone I’d never see again so I wouldn’t need to be embarrassed. That being said – I’d probably turn purple if my skirt was tucked up into my underoos.
This of all comments I should have read through before posting. Glaring mistake #1 in paragraph 2: *helped to keep me FROM looking like a fool*
Don’t point out the others!
My friends and family all call me the grammar queen. When people don’t use the correct form of a word or end a sentence/question with a preposition (like “Where is it at?), it drives me bonkers. I come from a small Midwest town and the preposition at the end of a sentence is very commonly used.
This is one of those grammatical areas with which I feel fine taking a little liberty. (I originally ended that sentence with a preposition but changed it just for you.) Sometimes proper grammar sounds stilted… and I’m not afraid to break the rules. BUT, as another poster said, you have to know the rules to break them.
I’m with you. I HATE to be corrected, though I know I make many a mistake (on my blog, in my speech, in life in general). Actually, now that I’m thinking about it, I don’t mind being corrected in private. If someone were to email me, or pull me aside, and say, “Hey I didn’t want to say this in front of those people, but just so you know…” And even in that circumstance, if someone were to correct my grammar like that, I might think they were obsessive and rather rude. It also depends on tone, however. If they were to pull me aside, and in a kind tone, correct me, I would be MUCH more receptive of their correction.
Now I have an urge to go re-edit every post I’ve written.
I too want to be corrected on language-usage whenever possible, but I have run across another barrier with that. I am not a native English-speaker but speak English pretty well but probably lack very much in the writing and grammar portion of the language. But since I am not a native speaker, very few people want to correct me, they think it’s good enough.. but what if I want to be perfect? There is no way I can know I’m saying it wrong if someone doesn’t tell me!
Even on those occasions that I tell people “Please, correct me” it’s very rare that someone does….quite annoying!
On a related note, I wish I could send you a picture of my little cheat-sheet that I have on my desk. It has three rows on it with three words in each.
Quiet-Quite-Quit
Whether-Weather-Wether
White-With-Whit.
Those are my top annoying mis-spellings. I know I do loads more, but those I just cant’ get in my head which is which.
I have a friend who always says, “I could care less” and I have been obsessing over it for almost three years. I’m very casual with grammar when I speak, but this offense in particular drives me nuts, and I just can’t find it in myself to correct her. LIFE.
wait, did i miss something? what is the teacher’s jarring mistake??
also, the more i read, the more i think we should be friends in real life.
I would want to be corrected by a close friend or close family member, but I think if someone else corrected me, it would just embarrass me. I might appreciate in the long run, but I would feel like an idiot. My husband knows a lot more than I do about vocabulary and certain idioms. I am constantly asking him if I used a certain word correctly or “what is that saying??” My grammar is OKAY…I think it is above average, but not necessarily one of my STRENGTHS. I certainly wouldn’t call myself an expert or anything…I only recently learned the correct usage of “lie/lay/laid/lain” and I am not even sure I REALLY remember, but I don’t think I will really ever use the word “lain” in conversation. Seriously, sometimes SO much of the population uses something incorrectly, that if I were to say it correctly, I would look like the moron.
I hear “minus well” instead of “might as well” all the time. I will not even tackle the horrible things I read on facebook.
My biggest pet peeve on the internets? The incorrect use of the word “blogs”
I really liked your blog today! I’ve read through all your blogs and I just love them!
What they really mean is that they like my post/posts. I am not sure why this one is so hard for people to understand. A blog is a site and a post is an article on that site. Plain and simple.
I, too, cannot bring myself to properly pronounce foreign wordsto other English speakers – particularly at restaurants. Nine times out of ten, I just hold up my wine list, point, and say, “That one, please.”
My husband is the most adorable mixer/mangler of metaphors, common sayings, and pronunciations, and I can’t bring myself to tell him that the saying is “beggars can’t be choosers” and not “pickers can’t be choosers” – because pickers, by definition, ARE choosers. Or that the phrase is “Whatchyou talkin’ ’bout, Willis?” Not PHYLLIS 🙂
When I do correct him, it’s so he doesn’t feel stupid in the future if he says it to someone else – i.e. ordering “sea urkin” at a sushi restaurant or pronouncing “cumin” as “cummin”. He’s a brilliant man, but there are some things a Master’s in Engineering just doesn’t prepare you for!
WAIT. Yesterday your husb matched, didn’t he (hopefully)?! To a fellowship! Please tell us how it went!
I was also thinking of you guys today since many of my friends matched last week. Sending well wishes your way!
I WOULD want to know, to prevent embarrassing myself in future; however, I would not necessarily want to be corrected like an idiot or a moron in front of other people. A simple, quiet, “That is actually pronounced…” would be fine. But a loud, public “That is not right! You are WRONG!” would not be fine.
I’ll probably look it up later just to check anyway because I feel that I am rarely wrong. Sometimes I am wrong. But I was totally right about the correct way to pronounce “forte”,take that, Mrs. Sanders.
You haven’t been around for a little while – I hope things are okay lovely lady!!! Thinking of you 🙂 xo
I’m good with it if it’s coming from a good source and isn’t rude. But when a former classmate who I’m not really friends with makes a comment on a FB status where I made a mistake, it ticks me off to no end.
I think it’s all about tact and if someone asks you to edit, then you’re just fine!
Missing your blog! Imagine lots is going on with you 🙂 hope it’s all good!
I think the key is to correct people in a funny, laughable kind of way….not a know-it-all kind of way. I don’t mind being corrected as long as its made to be no big deal.
I am very torn. On one hand, I like to be right, so I like to know the right thing… on the other, I don’t like being corrected because then I feel like an ass. (I was one of those people who said “intensive purposes” for the longest time BECAUSE I DIDN’T KNOW BETTER and then a friend pointed it out, and I was all, *glare* BUT then I was glad to know the correct way to say it so then I could, you know, be right.)
So, I don’t know. I guess if there was a way to learn discreetly or on my own… then that would be ideal. It really, truly depends on the situation. And who is doing the correcting. And HOW they are doing the correcting.
I actually correct (close) friends on Facebook frequently. Yes, I do feel terrible about it for a moment, but these are the people who already KNOW that I am a grammar freak. They are usually just amused at my silliness. Admission: I usually triple-check before I do correct them, just in case I am wrongly “correcting” them. It fries my nerves.
I was even nervous about posting this comment, because I am terrified that someone may point out an unintended grammatical error in my comment. Lest you fear I have no life whatsoever…I DO have a life, I promise. Like you, I just have an intense love of good grammar, instilled in me by my mother.
I love your blog, though, and I am slightly jealous that you get to fix grammar for a living. Someday, someday. Right now, I’m just a lowly college senior. Keep blogging!