Jumping on grammatical/spelling errors

[MissBrit]

Have you ever noticed how people like to jump on grammatical or spelling errors either on Facebook or on comments on an article or blog?  

I had a situation with this that rubbed me the wrong way. I have a degree in English. I am also NOT perfect. A few days after a car accident I was in I posted a status from my mom's cellphone (I was visiting them and their power was out) about how I was waiting to hear from the insurance company about my car and hoped that it wouldn't be totaled. Unfortunately, I used "here" instead of "hear." I know the difference between the two and it was just a random mistake. One of my friends responded with something along the lines of "hope everything goes well" while the other two decided to jump on my grammatical error. The first one,S, pointed out the error and the second one, P, made a comment along the lines of "and to think you're the English major."  I avoided commenting on the thread because I just didn't feel like defending myself over a small brain blip. EvilMissBrit would have responded to P with "Two words: Semi Colons" because P doesn't understand how to punctuate, in fact, her text messages are so hard to comprehend that I have to read them slowly and out loud to myself to figure out what she is saying.
I just want to add that I NEVER comment on my friends' spelling or grammar.
I find correcting people's grammar in the above situation rude.
I have also found that people point out spelling and grammar mistakes to discount someone's stated opinion and it feels like sometimes that is rude and catty and sometimes the opinion is so bigoted, racist, etc. that it's almost funny when people pick on the spelling or grammar mistakes.
I think the one finite time that it is ok to comment on a spelling or grammatical mistake is when it becomes a joke between the person who makes the mistake and the responders.
What do you wise e-hellions think? It is always inherently rude to comment on spelling and grammar or are there exceptions?

[camlan]

I have graduate degrees in English. I work as an editor/proofreader. I am not the Grammar Police. I make typos. I sometimes start a sentence in one tense and end up in another. It happens. We all make spelling and grammar mistakes.

I correct people if they ask me to. One of my SILs' native language is not English. She has asked me to correct her if she makes a mistake. But I only do so when it isn't in a situation where the correction will embarrass her, say in a crowd of people. If I saw an error in someone's resume, I'd point it out. And once I was in a client's office and happened to see some proofs for a job I was not working on. But there was a spelling error in the headline and I pointed it out. Because otherwise it would have been printed up with that error there and I knew the client would not like that.

I will also ask for clarification if the grammar/spelling is so messed up that I'm not sure what word was really meant. But that's not to correct the other person; it's so I can understand what was said or written.

A one-time typo in a text message? As long as I could understand what was being said, I'd barely notice it. Only those who have never made a typo or spelling mistake ever have the right to correct casual texting or conversation, in my opinion.

[hobish]

I think when you are an English major people get a weird joy out of correcting your mistakes. It is rude.

A few of my friends have done it to me jokingly. Then i go all red pen on them  Again, though, that is all in good (terribly geeky) fun.

[Twik]

It's not fair to jump on people for grammar and minor spelling mistakes in something as ephemeral as an internet posting. (Oh, and if you complain about other people's "grammer", you'd better be prepared for a counter-attack.)

However, there are times when serious mistakes begin to make the point of the writer hard to understand, or indicate a severe confusion of ideas. On another board I lurk on, there's a poster right now talking about "downloadable telescopes" - if you don't know the context, you'd be hard-pressed to figure out what he means, and I think it indicates a certain fuzziness in ideas that he cannot express that he means "astronomical photos (taken through telescopes) that may be downloaded from the web". I think in those cases, a "come again?" is perfectly acceptable, or even "straighten out your writing before we start to figure out if we agree with what you're saying, because right now we don't even know what you're saying".

[Petticoats]

I think when you are an English major people get a weird joy out of correcting your mistakes. 

Yup. I think it's a preemptive strike for some people; "I just know she's inwardly critiquing my grammar/spelling/punctuation when I write, so I'll remind her she's not perfect either!"

[siamesecat2965]

I think its rude to point them out; I type very quickly, and sometimes I make typos, and post before iv'e really looked it over.  Most of the time I know people know what I meant to say, but if its really funny, I'll make fun of myself.

That being said, I do have a couple of friends who I will jokingly tell, hey, that's wrong, and they will do the same to me, but we are not serious, and just do it to give each other a hard time, thats the nature of our relationships.  ONe friend posted something the other day and meant to say 'won" but typed "wong" - so of course I had to jump right on it, in fun, but she gave it right back to me!  But most people I won't say a word.

[Namárië]

I don't think it is inherently rude, but there are definitely a lot more rude ways to go about it than there are polite ones.

I also agree with hobish, some people just like jumping on people with English degrees. I warn others that if they correct my grammar, they are setting themselves up for some "helpful hints" later. 

And commenting on spelling in a cellphone status is kind of mean. A lot of phones automatically finish the word, and it is a lot easier to make mistakes with that! Not to mention, those dang buttons are so tiny!

[TaylorMade]

The only time I will comment on a grammatical/spelling error is if the error turns the sentence into something funny (and then you just have to comment on the funniness of it!) or totally changes the context of the message....

[JoanOfArc]

Grammar corrections that completely ignore the rest of the post annoy me to no end.  (Just now, I almost typed know instead of no!)  The only time I comment on other people's spelling or grammar is when I am editing a paper for them or if I am having trouble understanding the point they are trying to make.  Too often, grammar-policing is just the way one person makes another feel bad. 

Joan

[TootsNYC]

The only time I will comment on a grammatical/spelling error is if the error turns the sentence into something funny (and then you just have to comment on the funniness of it!) or totally changes the context of the message....

Exactly. And even then, I only comment if there's some further actual *conversation* to be had. Like, a small quip (that's not, "gee, you're stupid" but is more along the lines of "why do we abbreviate things that way?").

And I'm a copyeditor, so grammar and spelling are my niche.

It would be SO rude for me to comment like that. For other people to do it chastizingly would be rude as well.

[One Goat to Rule Them All]

I think it would be reasonable for you to delete the two comments. It's incredibly rude to criticize someone in a public forum like that.

[marcel]

The public correction should not have been made by first friend. On the internet, you are supposed to ignore those things, as long as it doesn't get illegible.
I do not find the second post rude though, simply because it is a friend. Off course, I do not know the relationship between you and your friends, but for me it is hard to read it any other way then typical friendly banter going on in or between most groups of friends all the time. Or have we come to the point when it is only banter if it is followed by a smily?

[blahblahblah]

The only time I ever pointed out someone's spelling error on a message board was because immediately prior to that, the poster had been snarking on someone else's typos. Now I'm wondering - was that rude? I didn't say, "LOL you're so dumb! It's 'regardless' not 'irregardless'!" It was more like, "If you're going to correct people on their spelling and grammatical errors, then it would be prudent for you to double-check your own words before posting." (<-- Not the exact words I used, as this incident happened years ago when I was in high school...but that was the gist.) Does that count as calling someone out on their rudeness, which is considered rude itself?

[hobish]

The public correction should not have been made by first friend. On the internet, you are supposed to ignore those things, as long as it doesn't get illegible.
I do not find the second post rude though, simply because it is a friend. Off course, I do not know the rel@tionship between you and your friends, but for me it is hard to read it any other way then typical friendly banter going on in or between most groups of friends all the time. Or have we come to the point when it is only banter if it is followed by a smily?

I think you mean a sarc-mark 

[Dindrane]

Personally, though this will sound like horribly pretentious bragging (), I have better grammar than most.  On top of that, I am a better writer than most.  Fortunately, most people use mostly correct grammar and write just fine, so being marginally better than that doesn't really set me up as all that special.

At any rate, in part because of that, I tend to notice poor grammar/syntax/writing.  If it's bad enough, it starts to seriously bug me.  But it's still horrendously rude to comment on it, unless there is some reason that you truly need to understand someone and cannot.

Aside from that, there's a difference between consistent and persistent grammar/spelling mistakes that end up throughout anything a person says/writes, and the occasional absent-minded slip-up.  I don't think I know anyone who doesn't make an absent-minded mistake at least every once in awhile.  Even people who are otherwise quite good at proper spelling and sentence construction can sometimes get it into their heads that something is correct when it isn't (for instance, it's only recently that I've stopped trying to spell "occasionally" with two "s"s ).