Grammar Frustration

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I know this is not an uncommon aspie trait, the feeling that you need to correct people's grammar. I know that most people do not care if their grammar is correct or not, and hate being corrected. But I seem to be getting more and more frustrated by it every single day. Even reading through these forums, I see people using 's to pluralize things instead of just s, your and you're misused, etc. and I feel like I'm going to develop a tic from holding in the corrections.

To make matters worse, I'm an English teacher. I teach English to non-native speakers, and it's my JOB to correct grammar all day. It's wonderful that I've found a job where my obsession with grammar is praised rather than ridiculed, but it means I get really used to correcting it all the time, and when I'm in a situation where I can't, it makes me absolutely CRAZY.

One of my friends (also an English teacher, although he has HORRIBLE grammar and NEVER corrects anyone's mistakes) is always calling me pedantic. That hurts. Most of the time, people are paying me to be pedantic - literally, to teach them and correct their mistakes. I think I do a damned good job of holding in my corrections almost all of the time, but if I let just ONE THING slip, like in a situation where the mistake changes the whole meaning of a sentence, everyone gets angry at me. Even if I try to be funny about it. I don't know what to do. If I hold it in, I can't even concentrate because I'm so frustrated. If I let it out, everyone gets angry at me.

Does anyone have any ideas about how to deal with this? My stress level is really high enough as it is without getting upset over something so stupid...

Hello kotshka,

From now on, I'll read your posts thoroughly: I've a good and easy book to learn English grammar but a bit (a tad?) too lazy to do the exercices

And sometimes, I'm proud to understand unproper English grammar because that means that I'm not that bad in English

But how come that your friend can be a teacher if he's himself so bad in English?
Is he dyslexic or something?

Possibly you could correct other peoples' grammar silently in your head, or correct their sentence but do not hit "Send" to post your correction? Or send it to yourself, PM yourself the correction, or even PM it to me or another willing friend if you must announce it to someone.

Another subtle way to correct grammar is to quote the ungrammatical person's post in your response, but stealthily change the quote to use correct grammar without pointing out that you have done so. Your itch will be scratched, and they will probably not notice or mind the subtle change.

If the original post must be entirely changed to preserve grammatical accuracy, instead of quoting it directly you can quote it indirectly, like this:

When you said that such and such....<paraphrase ungrammatical post using correct grammar>, .....I thought that blah, blah, blah <your response>. You will thus have corrected their grammar without stating that you have done so or calling undue attention to it.

My understanding is that your obsession is just to correct grammar, and not to necessarily enlist unwilling people in your obsession nonconsensually, which is the reason they get angry at you. The key word to remember here is "consensual".

A tough problem. I can kind of relate because it bugs me too, just not as much as it bugs you. I wish I had a good answer for you-- I like Molly's, though. If it helps at all I'll be a consensual participant -- you can correct my grammar any time it needs to be corrected ( and it will!).

I am exactly the same. Visiting Facebook is the worst! It sends me into a frenzy.

I find very bad grammar annoying; and difficult to read. My own grammar isn't perfect though, so I'm not about to complain! However, on a site such as this, you need to bear in mind that there are members with dyslexia and various other language related problems, so you just need to grit your teeth and put up with it. Definitely don't start calling people out over their grammatical mistakes, it isn't appropriate for a site such as this. However, you have my sympathy.

Actually, the thing that bothers me most is not that they made the mistake, it's that they don't care (which is like nails on a chalkboard for me). This applies to native speakers only by the way - with my students I have seemingly infinite patience. It never bothers me and I just calmly let the mistakes slip by, correcting when appropriate and convenient. But with native speakers it drives me out of my mind. I want to slap people every time I see a post resembling "omg your kidin me thats like so dumb ppl are such idiot's!" It makes me want to drive a stick into my eyes.

I don't know... If I make a mistake in something, I want to know. I want someone to correct me so I don't keep making the same mistake. I guess the reason it doesn't bother me with non-native speakers is that 1. they don't know it's a mistake and 2. they want to learn (they're students after all) and are receptive to correction. Native speakers on the whole seem to have far worse grammar than fluent non-native speakers, and they have absolutely no concern whatsoever over improving it. How can people WANT to be ignorant?

Don't get me wrong: I don't care about archaic grammar rules like splitting infinitives, and I think anyone who uses the word "whom" is just being a douche. But certain rules exist for a reason, and misuse changes the meaning of something. Yes, I'm well aware that people will generally understand the meaning regardless, but it's so easy to learn it the right way, and then it's not so grating on my nerves to read.

I have noticed that written mistakes are 1000% worse than spoken ones. Spoken ones pass by. I can correct them in my head and then forget them. But written ones will stay there and every time I see them it hurts all over again.

My friend is a teacher, by the way, because he's a native speaker, and for no other reason. There's a shortage of native speakers in this country, and that trumps actual knowledge of grammar. Also, he managed to BS his way through the interview process to convince the company owners (non-native speakers) that he is good. Most native speakers don't know anything about grammar. But teachers are supposed to be qualified... Ah well. At least I don't have to be in the room while he's teaching.

And by the way, if anyone is learning English and wants some help, it is a pleasure for me to help out. No problem whatsoever. I admire people who put so much energy into learning our language. It's deceptively simple, then surprisingly complicated out of nowhere. At least the language I'm learning is up-front about its complexity! English holds it in until you get to a certain level then goes "SURPRISE! I have a whole pile of tenses you've never even heard of! "

I can relate to that! If you happen to spot any grammatical mistakes in my posts please feel free to correct me in the thread or by PM. I'm learning French at the moment and oddly that seems to be messing with some of my English grammar too - and certainly with my spelling (which is British English).

Whom is actually a word and English is actually the hardest language to learn. Even Native Speakers have a hard time speaking it so that is why they also use poor grammar. I am sure my grammar isn't perfect either. But text speak I cannot stand. I wish they type properly online than typing things like "str8t" "ppl" "sry." I don't mind abbreviations like WP lol rofl AFF.

On Facebook I have a cousin who keeps using text speak and I want to tell her to spell properly. I wish there was a way to keep her status off my homepage so I wouldn't have to see it. It all be on her profile when I click on her name.

One thing that gets me is people using "their" and "they're" wrong. I don't see how could they not learn the difference. I had a hard time with it too up until age 12. Then mom told me "they're" means they are and when you say "they're doing it" it's short for "they are doing it." I then learned. It was easy all of a sudden. I also can't stand "your" and "you're" being used wrong too like "your wrong" than "you're wrong." I am amazed how people can still have difficulty in those areas of grammar.

But because I didn't hear "whom" often as a kid nor saw it a lot in books, I cannot tell the difference between whom and who. "Whom" was a new word for me when I was about 12. And when is it okay to say "nor" than "or?" I assume nor means neither. "You cannot go to the park nor to the store." But even using the word "or" means the same thing too in that context.

You people all need to go and check out this thread:

http://www.wrongplanet.net/postt166542.html

English is hard to master, but relatively easy to speak on a basic level. Each verb has only two forms in the present tense (with the exception of "be") and a basic past and future form which is quite easy to learn. (The other tenses are incredibly difficult to learn, but that comes later.) Nouns are not inflected, which means you only have to learn a noun once, rather than a whole chart detailing the different parts of speech. Furthermore, we have no gender for our nouns. Also, because so many people speak it as a second language, native speakers are used to deciphering accents and incorrect grammar, which means it's easy to be understood even if you only know a little bit of the language. On the other hand, very few foreigners learn to speak Czech, so when I speak imperfectly, people here have no idea what I'm saying half the time.

Yes, "whom" is a word, but it's unnecessary and outdated. It's a remnant from the days centuries ago when English was an inflected language (think "you" and "thou"). The language doesn't need it - its function is dictated by word order now. If you're interested, "whom" is the object and "who" is the subject. For example, correctly used:

Who kicked the ball? (subject)
He was the man who kicked the ball. (relative pronoun, also subject)

To whom are you giving that book? (indirect object)
Whom did he hit? (direct object)

Who killed whom? (both in one sentence)

In inflected languages, the words can be put in a different order because the endings are different. "Who killed whom" would have the same meaning as "Whom killed who" (though this doesn't make sense in English, it does in other languages). However, in modern English, the subject-verb-object order is fixed, so we don't need this word ending to tell us who was the killer and who got killed.

It's things like this that I don't care about. Worrying about "whom" or correcting people for saying "to boldly go" instead of the more boring "to go boldly" is just being picky for no reason. It doesn't change the meaning of the language and it's only held onto because the people who wrote the grammar books ages ago were obsessed with Latin and wanted English to be more like it. (See this brilliant comic for further explanation.) On the other hand, "you're" has a very different meaning from "your" which is still valid in modern English. People who actively resist learning these rules are making themselves willfully ignorant, which drives me nuts.

If someone has a language disability of course it's not their fault. I'm only annoyed when people refuse to learn, not when they can't or simply haven't yet. And of course I'm not about to go on a correcting spree on any web site - but man, I go nuts trying to hold it in, I really do.

As for "nor" and "or": "nor" should be used in conjunction with "neither," either as a negative of "either...or" or as an opposite to "both...and" - though I think this rule may be different in British English than in standard American, so please correct me if I'm missing anything. I may be an expert, but there is *always* something new to learn.

Examples:
We could go to the movies or the park.
We could go to either the movies or the park.

We can't go to the movies or the park.
We can go to neither the movies nor the park. (uncommon nowadays, but correct)

More common:
He is both interesting and intelligent.
He is neither interesting nor intelligent.

Hope this is helpful. It's helping me get it out of my system actually - if anyone has any other questions, bring 'em on! This is fun for me and I hope it's helpful for others.

Interesting to read. A long time ago my English teacher told me it was incorrect to start a sentence with 'And' or 'But' however I find myself doing just that. Is it wrong? Is this (that?) a common mistake?

I notice you used a hyphen too above to expand on your sentence rather than using a semi colon or full stop. This is something I do a lot. Is it technically correct?

I do not know what you can be talking about here. Are you referring to the present simple and the present continuous? If so, they are not easy to learn. There are loads of irregularities that require a lot of memorisation. As for the "basic past," are you referring to the preterite?

The way you are describing English verbs is not the way in which they are traditionally taught or learned. It is traditional to learn the "name" of each verb (i.e. the infinitive) and then learn the present simple, past participle, and preterite that correspond to that particular verb. To aid memorisation, verbs are grouped into categories that fall into similar patterns. Those three things (present simple, past participle, and preterite) are the building blocks for constructing the "harder" tenses you are referring to, most of which are constructed using the past participle with the addition of an auxiliary verb.





*cough, splutter*

"Thee" and "thou" are second person singular pronouns (object and subject ones respectively). The usage of "thee/ thou" and "ye/you" (second person plural) to distinguish plural from singular in the second person has now become archaic, and "you" is used for all four. I'm rather sad about that, as it leads to a lot of ambiguity not encountered in other languages. "Who" and "whom," however, are relative pronouns. They are something entirely different, and their usage is not archaic at all. "Whom" is optional in these modern times, but is not outdated. There is no apparent relation between the "whom" issue and the "thee/thou" issue, so I don't know why you're mixing the two up.



The common mistake of confusing you're and your is not a grammar issue. It's a spelling issue. However, the reason people confuse the two spellings is due to their ignorance of grammar. One is a contracted form of a verb. The other is a possessive adjective. If people don't know one from the other, they will confuse the two spellings, as both words are pronounced the same.

I am not sure why you are implying that "you're" is no longer valid in modern English. You seem to have some rather confused ideas.

Last edited by all_white on 30 Jun 2011, 3:50 pm, edited 2 times in total.

In spoken English it is fine to start a sentence with "and" or "but." In written English, it should be reserved only for extreme emphasis, so it should very rarely be used. Spoken and written English have different rules, for the simple reason that when you're speaking, you're making it up as you go along and might have something to add after you've already finished the sentence. If you're writing, however, the assumption is that you have plenty of time to consider your words and can make edits as necessary, so you shouldn't just be tacking on extra information in new sentences. If you're transcribing what someone says, however, the spoken rules apply.

The following is bad form:
I like apples. But I like bananas, too. And I like oranges.
In written English, it would be much better to say:
I like apples, but also bananas and oranges.
Or even:
I like apples, bananas, and oranges.
You have time to organize your thoughts, so you don't need to separate them.

However, when you're writing down what someone says, it's perfectly fine to write:
James said, "I like apples. But I like bananas, too. And I like oranges."
The fact that it's broken into sentences here allows us to "hear" in our heads where James paused, and the fact that he was adding the comments on bananas and oranges later, rather than in one fluid sentence.

Hyphens can be used in place of semicolons. That is to say, the information on each side of the hyphen should be able to stand alone as independent sentences. The hyphen just shows that they are strongly linked. Neither hyphens or semicolons should be overused, which is probably why we have two different devices that serve the same purpose.

Actually, I think the proper thing to do is to use a "dash" or double-hyphen (though nobody seems to do this nowadays), and single hyphens should only be used in hyphenated words, but I'm not 100% on that one. It's been a while since I've discussed grammar with anyone at such an advanced level! This is good for me. The longer I live here and the more I converse with non-native speakers, the more my language degrades. I need to brush up!

Oooh, we've now moved onto punctuation, I see.

That is a factually incorrect statement.

If they had the same function, why would we need both?

You might as well say "full stops can be used in place of commas" or "brackets can be used in place of colons."

For anyone confused about punctuation, I recommend an excellent (and very funny) book, called "Eats, Shoots, and Leaves: The Zero Tolerance Approach to Punctuation:"

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Eats-shoots-lea ... 1861976127

Heartily recommended.

What I mean is, when you know the infinitive of a word in English, you already know the present simple form (except for he/she/it, which usually just means adding an s). My students are not native speakers - they do not learn the "parts" of the verb all at once. They learn the present (go) and use it to death, then they learn the past simple (went) and use it to death, then the future (will go) until their ears bleed. It's only much later that they learn the past participle and work on things like continuous forms, present and past perfect (simple and continuous), and future perfect. But it's very easy to learn to talk in a basic way about the present, past, and future in English if you use only the most basic forms.



I didn't mean to suggest that thou and you were the same as who and whom. I was only using them as a dating tool. I just meant that "whom" as a necessary part of speech stopped being necessary a long time ago. I'm well aware of the meanings of the second person singular as it used to exist, and I mourn its loss as much as you.



I did not mean to say that "you're" is no longer valid. I meant to say just the opposite, that the difference between "your" and "you're" is still valid in modern English, rather than the difference between "who" and "whom," which is no longer relevant to the grammar of our language. Apologies if my word order confused you.