1. 
   1
   Leah
   

   wrote on 30 June 2009 at 13:00

   I am totally a gram­mar nazi, but I can usu­ally tell the dif­fer­ence between a typo and some­one not know­ing the dif­fer­ence. How­ever, I’ll usu­ally only bother cor­rect­ing peo­ple who REALLY SHOULD know bet­ter… you know, peo­ple who have done or are doing English/Journalism degrees :P

   
   
2. 
   2
   Tim
   

   wrote on 30 June 2009 at 15:20

   I’m definently in the don’t care cat­e­gory– can speak 4 lan­guages can’t spell any of them

   
   
3. 
   3
   queenstuss
   

   wrote on 1 July 2009 at 18:35

   Any­one who has com­pleted pri­mary school should know better.

   I am a grammar/punctuation nazi and quite fine with that thank you. Once upon a time I got paid to per­suade 12 year olds to use cor­rect grammar.

   
   
4. 
   4
   Nathan
   

   wrote on 1 July 2009 at 21:08

   Know­ing bet­ter is one thing — mak­ing an occa­sional mis­take through haste another altogether.

   I have no idea how many words I’ve writ­ten on this blog — and I think I’ve made the mis­take only a hand­ful of times.

   Prob­a­bly 0.01% of my use of there/their/they’re or your/you’re. If you’re happy for that level of scrutiny to be applied to every­thing you write then sure… be that way. But remem­ber it can be applied every­where. Like when someone’s play­ing the piano. I’m a note Nazi. I never hit a wrong note on the piano. It means I play very slowly, and very rarely… but I also get the moral high ground and can point out every time a mis­take is made.

   
   
5. 
   5
   Amy
   

   wrote on 2 July 2009 at 12:55

   Very proud to be a grammar/punctuation nazi, thank you very much.

   And any­one whose job is all about the Eng­lish lan­guage (ie teach­ers, jour­nal­ists, proof­read­ers, mar­keters) should be as well.

   And yes, I do proof­read junkmail.

   
   
6. 
   6
   Nathan
   

   wrote on 2 July 2009 at 15:20

   Being a “nazi” any­thing is bad form.

   I’m happy to aim for per­fect gram­mar — but I won’t send any­body else to the gas cham­bers for mak­ing a mis­take. Because that’s likely to lead to alle­ga­tions of hypocrisy.

   
   
7. 
   7
   queenstuss
   

   wrote on 2 July 2009 at 16:52

   Am a note nazi too. Used to get paid, actu­ally still do get paid, for get­ting kids to play the right notes.

   I proof­read junkmail too. And keep the worst offend­ers to laugh at later…

   I also get irate at bad gram­mar on the news. There’s a dif­fer­ence between an occa­sional error by some­one who mostly has cor­rect gram­mar, and some­one who makes mis­takes out of ignorance.

   
   
8. 
   8
   Nathan
   

   wrote on 2 July 2009 at 17:00

   Does this mean that if you’re play­ing in church and miss strike a chord you’re happy for us to run up and tell you it was wrong.

   That’s the behav­ioural equivalent.

   
   
9. 
   9
   queenstuss
   

   wrote on 3 July 2009 at 14:17

   The thing is, I’ve got­ten very very good at cov­er­ing my mis­takes on the piano…

   I might be a gram­mar nazi, and a note nazi, but I do try to keep my thoughts to myself, because that’s usu­ally the more lov­ing thing to do. And if you walk around com­plain­ing about people’s gram­mar all the time, you look like a bit of a tool really.

   
   
10. 
    10
    Nathan
    

    wrote on 3 July 2009 at 14:22

    That’s kind of the point of the orig­i­nal post isn’t it?

    
    
11. 
    11
    Leah
    

    wrote on 3 July 2009 at 21:51

    There is a dif­fer­ence between gram­mat­i­cal errors in printed Eng­lish and musi­cal errors while play­ing a piano piece.

    You can proof-read a piece of printed Eng­lish before pub­lish­ing it. (Indeed, most of the peo­ple I ridicule for bad gram­mar are those whose jobs it is to do just that.) You can­not proof-…play? a piano piece before it reaches people’s ears.

    Like I said. I don’t usu­ally men­tion it when some­one makes a gram­mat­i­cal error. I will if the offender is some­one who has been trained in proper Eng­lish gram­mar (beyond that in which the rest of soci­ety has been edu­cated) or if they are cur­rently in the process of it, OR if it is actu­ally their job. There­fore: jour­nal­ists, edi­tors, authors, peo­ple who print cat­a­logues, teach­ers, jour­nal­ism stu­dents, edu­ca­tion stu­dents (I give them a bit of a reprieve coz I know they have a lot of other stuff to learn too), Eng­lish stu­dents… etc. I won’t do it to any old blogger/facebooker/twitterer. It’s a waste of time because too many peo­ple have ter­ri­ble grammar.

    
    
12. 
    12
    Nathan
    

    wrote on 3 July 2009 at 22:14

    The prob­lem is that very rarely is a blog­ger employed to blog.

    So, I fit my blog­ging, and com­ment­ing, in around my work sched­ule. I do it as time allows it — and don’t have time to proof read my com­ments or posts. Or I rarely do. I proof­read work stuff. I don’t have time to sit around all day proof­read­ing my blog — or other people’s — let alone point out their errors. Nor do I care if I make an error less than 1% of the time. I notice other people’s bad gram­mar — but this whole “point­ing and laugh­ing” thing that you peo­ple engage in is pretty sad and unless you’re pro­duc­ing a sim­i­lar amount of con­tent and not mak­ing the same mis­takes you’re in no posi­tion to feel superior.

    Espe­cially if you use the word “coz” in your argument.

    
    
13. 
    13
    queenstuss
    

    wrote on 4 July 2009 at 10:51

    I expect work that some­one has been paid to write to be cor­rect, all of the time. Whether it is a pam­phlet in my let­ter box, or a poorly con­structed sen­tence on the news. I haven’t ever made a for­mal com­plaint, just com­plained to who­ever is in the room.

    I am very very tempted at times to cor­rect gram­mar, spelling and punc­tu­a­tion errors in people’s face­book sta­tuses. Espe­cially if I used to teach them. But I don’t. Because I make mis­takes some­times too.

    My point is that I’m a gram­mar nazi but try my best to keep my mouth shut so that I don’t look like a hyp­ocrite. I think good gram­mar, punc­ta­tion and spelling is important.

    
    
14. 
    14
    Nathan
    

    wrote on 4 July 2009 at 16:45

    Yeah, I agree it’s impor­tant. I just find peo­ple who pointscore by cor­rect­ing it incred­i­bly annoying.

    
    
15. 
    15
    Amy
    

    wrote on 6 July 2009 at 10:31

    If it is any con­so­la­tion Nathan, I only do it to you to annoy you.

    
    

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