The online grammar police need to find a new beat.
I know the difference between there, their and they’re.
And it’s and its. Too/two/to, too.
But I’m not ready to join the homophone supremacy movement.
How did this even become a movement? How did “I know the difference between you’re and your” become something people add to their Facebook profiles? Something to gloat about?
So far, this seems to be an internet-only phenomenon.
If you’ve visited the internet (ever), you’ve probably noticed that it’s full of bad spelling and terrible grammar. The internet is bad grammar’s natural habitat; it’s where spelling errors mate in the wild.
But it’s also where people go to complain about bad spelling and grammar.
Not just to complain about it, but to lament and lord over it.
For every person online who doesn’t know the difference between they’re and their, there’s someone else who does know the difference and can’t wait to say so.
Often not so politely.
If you drop an apostrophe somewhere public online, like in a comments section, the other commenters will shove it directly down your throat. Whatever point you were trying to make won’t matter. The very next comment will always be, “Says the moron who doesn’t know the difference between it’s and its.”
You’d think I’d be pro grammar rage. I am a professional writer. This is one arena where I’m actually superior to most people. (It’s this and “Name That Tune,” that’s all I’ve got.)
But grammar is a very civilized pursuit. We agree to follow certain rules for clarity’s sake — and to protect the integrity of language. It’s noble.
The sort of grammar-sniping that happens online rarely has anything to do with clarity. The grammar police understand what you mean; they just want you to know that you’re not saying it right. They’re not noble, they’re snobby.
I don’t believe, by the way, that all the bad spelling and grammar online are an indication that people are getting dumber by the hour — or that our culture is sliding into a sewage pit. (Though both of these statements may be true.)
I think that, thanks to the internet, there are more people and more kinds of people publicly trying to put things into words.
Pre-internet, if you didn’t write for work or write for pleasure, you probably didn’t write at all.
But now we’re all writing constantly. We’re texting, we’re emailing, we’re updating, we’re commenting.
All that typing and public writing must be scary for people who don’t feel comfortable with their writing skills. (I’m fairly comfortable with mine, and I still won’t leave comments on web sites other than my own. I’m afraid to sound stupid. I’m afraid I’ll say something incorrectly or flat-out wrong, or that someone will find fault with me. I’m really, really afraid of typos.)
My mom sent me an email for the first time a month or so ago, and it struck me how rarely I’d read something from her before the internet — besides to-do lists and greeting cards and “Rainbow was not in school yesterday because she was ill” notes.
Now she has an internet shop and she’s constantly typing at her computer. She’s a pretty good writer, actually — she’s funny — though spelling isn’t her strong suit.
Spelling isn’t a strong suit for most people. (We can’t all win the grade school spelling bee two years in a row.) That doesn’t mean they don’t have something to share.
I hate to think of my mom posting her opinion on a forum and getting slammed with the old “why don’t you learn the difference between it’s and its” club.
I guess that’s what bothers me most about grammar bullying … It pretends to be about improving the discourse and making the web smarter, but it’s really just another way to log on and tell someone “your dumb.”
* * *
One more thing about knowing the difference between their, they’re and there: It’s such a minor thing to brag about, from a grammatical standpoint. If you’re going to brag about your mad word skills, make it something impressive. Make it “I understand the difference between comprise and compose.” Or even “Lay and lie – I get it.” You know the difference between you’re and your? So does my 12-year-old niece.
Contact the writer:
402-444-1149, rainbow.rowell@owh.com
My husband is a deep thinker with amazing thoughts and ideas to share, but his spelling skills are atrocious. I used to have a difficult time reading his words, even if they were penned in a love letter to me. I have learned to overlook the errors and focus on the big picture of what he is saying.
I remember in middle school, my English teacher would have us scan the school newsletter for mistakes and then she would gleefully call the office with our error report. I took great joy in that process and for many years after that experience, I would continue to gleefully point out those errors to anyone who would listen.
While I am not a grammar or spelling guru (I have a tough time staying in the same tense when writing, singular and plural always throws me off, and I have a tendency to create run-on sentences like it’s nobody’s business), I still enjoy catching a spelling or grammar error. I have learned that I do not always have to tell the person about the mistake. I might point it out to my husband and enjoy a little chuckle, but I now refrain from correcting the person who made the mistake.
It’s a grace (coupled with humility) that comes with time I suppose, and the ability to not think yourself superior to others, even in matters as trivial as spelling and grammar.
My sister was married to a scuzzy lame excuse for a human being who was incapable of spelling correctly. He would e-mail us ‘from her’ telling us how sorry she was to miss the upcoming family get-together, and we would know she didn’t write it because he used the wrong puncutation, spelling, verb tense etc. which she would NEVER do. We got a big kick out of it, and once my sister realized her husband was a slug, she thought it was pretty funny, too. I don’t go so far as to point out someone who uses the wrong your, but it does bother me that no one can w8 2 ak2alee type word in and of itself. Is there a prize for the most obnoxious combination of letters and numbers posing as a word?
Oh, wow, did this ever resonate, Rainbow! I love your column, by the way. As a blogger who has been hit by the spelling police, I share your contempt. I’m a writer. I was an editor for thesis writers in college and get great joy from the written word. Yes, spelling comes easily to me, BUT I have no patience for those who patrol the internet seeking errors to correct and shamelessly touting their grammatical superiority. Bah! I want to hear what people are feeling and thinking; how they put that into words is so unimportant to me. Thanx four bringing this topic to lite. Hopefuly, the word will get around that their are more importint things hapening on the internet then prefect spelling and grammer.
I wish people would care less about grammar, and more about logic.
Let’s see people called out for ad hominem attacks, Straw Man arguments, Godwin’s Law, and other fallacies.
As for spelling, Google Chrome has a nice automatic spell-check feature. Sometimes I need to check Dictionary.com to be certain.
I wonder… do the French correct internet grammar as much as Americans do? I know they are more protective of their language, creating French words to replace English buzzwords.
As a high school English teacher, I am supposed to be a uniformed member of the grammar police, and at times I am, but my feelings range from apathetic to ambivalent. On the one hand, I think the smirking “I don’t know, CAN you go to the bathroom?” types of distinctions are both irritating and useless. Move on. Impact is both a noun and verb. Get over it. Language is a living thing and it changes. On the other hand, the its/it’s and your/you’re confusions make me sigh and reach for chocolate. A quick little punctuation mark and your thoughts are so much clearer. Apostrophes–they’re free, they’re easy. Get to know them. While I grade mostly on content and only a little on grammar and punctuation, I’m still not ready to throw all rules into a giant recycle heap of “whatever.” Sometimes they actually make language more functional (remember the panda who eats shoots and leaves?) but sometimes it’s more about aesthetics and that’s not unimportant. Reading an essay–or any communication–with good ideas and bad grammar is like watching the “before” segment of What Not to Wear where you cringe at the girl in sweat pants paired with a bedazzled tank top. It’s not a pretty picture–but it so easily could be.
Patrice, I’m happy to see someone else use “Bah!” as am exclamation. And I’m happy to hear from another writer. When I was writing this column, I wondered whether I was the only person irritated by all the irritation.
I think bad spelling and usage used to bother me more … When I left journalism for a few years, I worked with someone who didn’t know any of the rules but instinctively wrote beautifully. He wrote by ear, and he was a great editor. Anyway, it made me a lot less judgmental. I think some people (especially really creative people) just don’t have a place in their brains to store grammatical rules.
I have never had a problem with understanding when the writer misused their, they’re, etc., or its or it’s. And isn’t understanding the point to communication? So I would say lighten up.
Having said that, what drives me crazy is the verbal epidemic of “you know”. It’s like, you know, a person can’t say a sentence, you know, without liberally inserting, you know, a bunch of “you knows”. Listen to interviews on any local newscast and keep track of how many times the interviewee says “you know”. I guess we all have our pet peeves.
I’ve been the grammar police before, but only when a person is proclaiming how smart they are. It’s more of a “If you’re so smart, how come you can’t use the proper word/grammar” thing than an always thing.
The one thing that does kill me is when there are no capital letters or punctuation. Those posts are next to impossible to read/understand.
Bad spelling on the internet is usually a product of the perceived value (lack of with say YouTube) of what they’re responding to, emotional state of the writer etc. I love to write, it’s the one medium I have to transcend all the thoughts that run through my mind but I’m awful at grammar… structure to be specific. Mostly because I slept through every English class I ever took.
But much like what Jerry said my goal is to be understood or at least give the reader the feeling of understanding. And luckily I have a couple of friends who have made offers to fix the grammar in my work without sabotaging the way I speak.
It’s not so much that people can’t understand what you’re saying, it’s that those misspellings detract from the core message and bring focus to the surface. If a letter from the President had a spelling error I am certain whoever read it would start thinking about how the President has a grammatical error and spend less time thinking about what he’s actually saying. Like it or not, that’s the way it is.
Funny how no one gets worked up over “who” vs. “whom”. Could it be that even the self-appointed grammar-cops don’t know the difference?
And people wonder why we’re twenty-first on the list of the world’s most literate nations.
The very idea that a purported “professional” writer is leading a charge with a battle-cry of “Its not that so bad, lulz!” is disappointing, but what more would one expect from a “professional writer” who cannot scrape together a coherent metaphor (“…it’s where spelling errors mate in the wild …” Really? I think that caused my soul to vomit)?
In general, confusing the proper spelling of words does the English language a disservice. In specific, if the errors are made in a personal correspondence – even online– it displays a lack of courtesy to the recipient. After all – how much trouble is it to re-read one’s writing and parse for clarity? To double-check the usage of a word?
No one is without fault and I agree that pointing out an innocent spelling or grammatical mistake is, at best, pedantic and borders on rude. However, we are speaking of the Internet here. This sort of behavior is little more than online equivalent of name-calling and often the last resort of someone with nothing to say but who wants to be heard. Either learn from your mistakes and circumvent further attacks or grow a backbone and ignore it. There are others, however, whose efforts are in service to the English language itself and I number myself among them. One or two slip-ups are fine – I err myself from time-to-time – but if someone is a repeat offender in an area, there is no harm in mentioning their mistake. To gloss over errors because it’s “the way I do things” and “there isn’t any harm” only serves to arrest self-improvement.
And to the author of this piece, I think I am right to rebut with a piece from another professional writer:
http://etext.virginia.edu/railton/projects/rissetto/offense.html
Take it to heart.
Victor,
My intent was not to defend bad grammar and spelling — but to attack the uncivil attack on people who make mistakes.
I’ve taken a second look at my “spelling errors mate in the wild” line, and I’m sticking with it. Spelling varies so much online that sometimes people seem to be mangling an already mangled word.
Sorry about the soul vomit.
I agree with the sentiment that some blowhards like to show their superior intelligence by constantly correcting, but I am uneasy with the path that shear laziness is taking us down.
Sure there are some phrases that cause the hair on the back of my neck to stand up: “Where are you AT? But on many occasions I have to pause and translate poor writing, not to mention guess at the writer’s intent.
Your article takes a shot at the blowhards (which I applaud) but in doing so lends support to the wrong cause. Its like the parent screaming at the stranger for reprimanding “her child” but failing to correct the bad behavior of the child that caused the reprimand.
On the light side, I’m sure you’ve seen this and I laugh every time I think of it:
——————————————————–
An English professor wrote the words, “Woman without her man is nothing” on the blackboard and directed his students to punctuate it correctly.
The men wrote: “Woman, without her man, is nothing.”
The women wrote: “Woman: Without her, man is nothing.”
Our disappointment in the Omaha World-Herald for their slidding of their quality. In my household, we find it appalling with the mistakes we find in the newspaper, misspelled words, articles that end without finishing and general indication that the World Herald has cut costs by eliminating people who proofread the articles prior to final printing. Very disheartening and one of the reasons, I am thinking, that readership has dropped off. A lack of professionalism seems to be present with noone in charge or caring about this type of error.
Yes! Right on, you hit the nail on the head with todays comment. I think about what you say EVERY time I post on the internet, which is not very often. This is your best story I have read since you have “been back”.
My favorite story of yours, if this is the right place, was a couple years ago, maybe longer about you going to Kansas to buy a used car. Remember it?
Anyways, keep writing, don’t worry if you misspell a word, I wont catch it.
Uh, Joe…you incorrectly used the word “shear”. Should be “sheer”!
lol
Thanks, Virgil.
I do remember that column about buying the car on eBay. I’ll post it to the blog when I’m back at work tomorrow.
Kirsten, I think you’re absolutely right to encourage your students to follow the rules in the classroom. That’s not grammar policing; that’s teaching!
I liked the mating metaphor.
)
Quite colorful.
I think it’s easy to forget, too (especially on the internet), that many people didn’t learn English as their first language. English grammar isn’t easy to master, even for those raised speaking and writing it. Most of the people I work with learned English as their second or third language, including several of my bosses. Even though they are highly intelligent people, it is still occasionally an eyebrow-raiser to read an email from any one of them.
And, honestly, how many times online has someone corrected another person’s grammar and received a, “Gee, thanks! I always thought that particular verb was transitive but you have opened my eyes!” in response? It’s usually just the beginning of a long & lingering flame war in which compositional competence typically degrades exponentially.
I also agree with the point on bragging about mastering the basics of grammar/spelling (your vs. you’re, etc.) Golly, good job.
Hey Victor, lighten up, man. What’s so superior about YOUR metaphors, eh?
Spot on. While I am an OCD language prof (and former spelling bee winner), one of the things I’ve learned as I’ve taught is that forum matters. If students are turning in papers to me, I expect them to proofread, and I’ll downgrade them substantially if there are tons of mistakes, because it’s supposed to be professional. But if they’re writing a blog, a text message, an IM conversation, or something else that’s more informal, I’ll let spelling and punctuation slide as long as I can understand them. As it turns out, if you’re a grammar/spelling Nazi in a language classroom, students will be able to regurgitate grammar rules and correctly place accent marks, BUT they don’t learn to speak. I’ll gladly make the trade for students who can actually USE the language they’re learning in real situations.
Another observation: Research on teaching writing shows that people learn to write by writing, so the more they write, the better they get at it. In the end, I think grammar police in public forums end up doing more harm than good. People want to know that their ideas are being considered, and if you always get feedback correcting grammar and spelling, it shows that people aren’t considering your ideas, so why bother?
Mischa — Really good point. I hadn’t even thought of that, that there are lots of second-language English speakers online, too.
And, Anita, I love your entire comment! This makes so much sense to me — that forum and situation matter.
Texting, blogging. casual e-mails, who cares.
If you’re creating a Web page, or any other semi-professional or professional writing, you should take pride in your proper spelling, punctuation, etc.
If someone is nit-picking (should that by hyphenated or not) your casual writing, they really need to find a life.
I read Forums and blogs or many different subjects, and find that the common internet user just types it in, and hopes it’s right, even when spell checkers are available.
Unfortunately, it creeps into professional/business e-mails and writing. That is when it cost you the most. If you don’t have enough time to make sure your Web Page or business mail is correct, how can I be sure you’ll be able to properly do the job I want you to do?
Leave my casual writing alone.
Rainbow on twitter
Look, I wrote a book …
Coming in April from Dutton.
"Cracking, laugh-out-loud dialogue, characters that feel painfully real, and a sweet premise about love in the information age."
-- Jodi Picoult, bestselling author of Sing You Home
Order ATTACHMENTS now:
Amazon.com
BN.com
Borders.com
Indiebound.org
Follow Rainbow on Facebook (Twitter, too!)
After you've read everything on omaha.com, check these out ...
Recent Posts
Archives
Recent Comments