Grammar Nazis on the Prowl

By Liz | Comments (0) | Trackbacks (0)

On my blogosphere rounds today I saw something pretty funny. And, of course, I have to write about it.

Grammar nazis are pretty prevalent in certain parts of the ’sphere. You have to be really careful how you word things, check your spelling religiously, etc. If you are a grammar nazi, well…

Let’s say you write something like:

The grammatical errors in your post caused me to skim it.

Then you follow up that harsh commentary with this:

UBD outdone themselves on the look of that one

Outdone themselves? Really? This particular grammar nazi is letting her geographical dialect influence her writing. Just because it sounds right while sitting around the card table on a Saturday night does not mean that it’s grammatically correct. Tsk, tsk. Bad form, Grammar-nazi.
The correct way to write the above phrase (read: grammatically correct):

UBD really outdid themselves with that design.

Learn it. Love it. Outdid is the past tense of outdo, GN girl.

Another example of how not to be the grammar police (from the comments of the same post):

I feel so much better knowing that there are others that are much worse grammatically than me.

There’s the insult. Here’s the funny:

And yes John does edit post.

Granted this member of the GN admits to being grammatically challenged. Didn’t stop him from highlighting someone else’s errors, though, did it?

Corrected version should look like:

And, yes, John does edit posts.

Why am I highlighting the obvious mistakes of the GN? Well, because they’re the GN, of course. I wouldn’t necessarily do this for just anyone. Because most people are nice enough to ignore slight errors in usage. But when they have nothing coherent to really add and are just being snippy they resort to finding errors in wording. Tsk, tsk, GN. Look in the mirror first. And if you’re going to try to denigrate someone because of their language, you should most definitely proofread, proofread, and proofread some more prior to publishing your insulting comments.

Now, some may tell me that I am also a GN, but I’m not generally. I found the above comments to be offensive not only to the original poster but also to the people in the comments who aren’t very well versed. They were unnecessary barbs to an author of a blog post with which they didn’t agree. They were also highly hypocritical. And who really likes a hypocrite? You know what they say about glass houses and stones, don’t you?

I expect that you’ll find a couple of errors in this post, too. That’s ok. I at least have an excuse- I’ve got a cognitive dysfunction. Things get transposed, words get unintentionally omitted and shortened, etc. That’s my thing and I accept it. However, being ADD (ha!) and using ESL as excuses when throwing insults isn’t an excuse in my book. Ya know?

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