Grammar Nazis?

[ProfileUser]

Anyone here get hugely annoyed when someone else uses bad grammar, or mispronounces something? I always feel the urge to correct them. It just gnaws away at the inside of my soul or something. Lol I just hate it. My boyfriend says "video game council" and "jalapeno" (without the tilde on the N).I correct him all the time but it doesn't seem to sink in. If I misspell or mispronounce something, I seriously beat myself up about it. I don't like being hypocritical.

I usually correct people to seem intelligent. That's probably a weird ego thing.

 

[Ereth]

I would say it is, yes.

 

[Aspieistj]

I suppose I'm in the minority here, as I tend to not care so much about grammar and spelling, so long as what is said is comprehensible and gets the point across. In spoken conversation, especially, I don't think it's terribly important to try and incorporate all the rules of the proverbial book...I use a lot of idioms and "shortcuts" myself, and one has to accept that it's more often than not a cultural thing rather than knowledge or education. An exception to that could be something like what one often sees written on social media, when the offense to grammar and spelling is clearly born out of laziness rather than a lack of education...THAT bothers me quite a bit.

I have an AAS, two BS degrees and finally, two MS degrees. All required extensive written work and I never had a prof who didn't point out any mistake in the written assignments and deduct points from the grade. I was always driven to get an A in every test and assignment throughout all my years of education. I guess I either had to accept a lower grade or learn to spell check, proof read, use an impressive vocabulary, and never relax my grammar and punctuation. Speaking well has never hurt me and it has become such an ingrained habit that an awareness of standard American English is simply a part of me. Of course, I understand how to communicate with small children and those for whom English isn't their first language. For me, it is similar to people who always strive to look and dress appropriately or use proper table manners. It isn't a life or death situation but it is important to me.

 

[bookworm44]

I think there are worse sins in the world to crusade against than mispronunciation.

By the way, it's "LOL" not "lol" and every time someone writes (or worse says) it without actually laughing I die a little more inside.

There's a TED talk about that which was helpful to me. The presenter was actually explaining how texting is really more like speaking than writing and has its own structure. He specifically talks about LOL and how some words/acronyms/symbols have come to mean something other than their literal original meaning in this context. It helped me a lot to hear his perspective on the topic.

John McWhorter: Txtng is killing language. JK!!! | Talk Video | TED

 

[Madame Catfish]

I absolutely hate it whenever natural speakers butcher the English language. I am tolerant if the speaker is new to English, but cannot bear the sheer laziness that comes with most speech patterns. I don't mean to come off as an ass when correcting someone, but usually do. When making a grammatical mistake, I hope somebody points it out to me as to avoid it in the future and not sound like a slob. Sadly, I incorrectly assume that others feel the same. I can be somewhat tolerant of the people who are ignorant of proper grammar, but those who dismiss it as unimportant irritate me to the point of severe stress. (Incorrect conjugation of "is" hacks me the most, such as: "The apples is on the table." rather than, "The apples are on the table.")