Top 5 reasons To Never, Correct Anyone's Grammer (or Speling)

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First off, this is for unsolicited grammer or speling corrections. If someone asks you for help proofreading then of coarse help them out. However, if they don't ask you to correct they're grammar then don't. Heres why.

1. Its Obnoxious

This is the first and most important reason; correcting mistakes is obnoxious. The whole point of language is to discuss ideas and the whole point of grammar is to ensure that language is clear. Usually though you can understand what someone is saying even if they make a grammar mistake so if you bring it up, it's like in jr. high or high school when the teacher asks a thought-provoking question and someone raises their hand to ask to use the hall pass. Your detracting from the conversation for something that doesn't matter. Its obnoxious

If the grammar is bad enough that you don't understand you can kindly ask for clarification. Be kind not rude. Thats good advice for nearly every situation.


2. English Is hard

There are so many "rules" (more on this later) and so much confusion in English that I don't no how effectively it can be taught. For example, I'm pretty sure that everyone is taught that you should put a comma wherever there should be a pause in the sentence, but that can be, confusing because what if, you read the sentence, in a dramatic way, or just differently from everybody else? Also remember being told in element,ary school to sound out words? And remember how there are a gazillion "exception to the rule" words/

English is so difficult, that even professional writers and editors who are payed to write or read hundreds of thousands of words every year make mistakes. Is this because their stoopid, incompetent or uneducated? of coarse not. Its because there human, just like all of us. I bet that any professional writer or editor will tell you that their's at least 1 word or rule that they struggle with. It may surprise you to know that I'm not a professional writer, but I know I defiantly struggle with some. (Its probably impossible to tell from my impeccable english in this post.)

Image credit: Me

3. Grammar is "more like 'guidelines' than actual rules."

There is no central authority on the English language. The rules depend on what country your writing for, what style guide your following and which kind of writing your doing. For instance, dropping the Oxford comma like I did in the previous sentence is ok for magazines and newspapers but its a cardinal sin in other cases. Passive voice is frowned upon but is it actually incorrect? After an introductory prepositional phrase do you really need a comma? If you forget to use article, is it incorrect, or does it just sound funny to native speaker?

To add to the confusion, writers will break the rules on purpose. Fragments bad. But sometimes effective. Run-ons are bad but sometimes thoughts or actions are going so quickly that you don't have time for punctuation and you just gotta hurry to the end of the sentence so you can catch your breath please don't die.

4. "It's a fast-paced, razzle-dazzle" world.

THe world is less formal and more fast paced than it used to be. Sometimes i wish we could be more formal and take things a bit slower but thats just not reality. Writer's have dead lines to meat and they may not be able, to spend as much time proofreading as they'd like. Also so much of what we wright is social media posts and texts where grammar is optional. Do we really require every one to painstakingly proofread every thing they write?

6. The pride comes before the fall

If you make a point of correcting other peoples errors then when you inevitably make an error, They'll jump down you're throat correcting you. And you'll deserve it. So be kind and not obnoxious.