Why's it so bad to correct people's spelling mistakes?

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The OP makes a good point that a letter from a school should be correct. So should a newspaper article or a quote from a spokesperson. These people are professionals and we can expect them to do things properly. The same expectation should not apply to posters on these forums (fora?), who have different levels of education, and grew up speaking different versions of English, if English is their native language at all. Being corrected in front of the group, especially when doing the best you can, does not make anyone feel welcome.

touchy much.

Are you telling me or asking?

As for CockneyRebel; I didn't mean to insult you, but I don't understand why it's so difficult, especially on the internet with all the information you need to spell properly so readily and easily accessible, to continuously misspell (I had to look this up).

I have a learning disability in reading and writing. If I didn't have access to Firefox, I wouldn't be posting here because I would be too embarrassed and frustrated to post here. Internet Explorer doesn't have the tools that I need, in order not to look like a fool, when I post. Walk a mile in my shoes, before you judge me.

Back to the question. "Why is it rude to correct people's spelling". Generally, it is. One time I had a girlfriend whose 11-year-old son lived away, he took to writing to me as we became friends. His grammar and spelling was atrocious. So I would write back with the corrected copy of his work, same as a schoolteacher would do.

Now I cringe at knowing I did that. It was arrogant and patronizing. But I meant no harm of course, I just thought I was being helpful. It's that kind of behaviour that we need to learn, what is appropriate and what isn't and it's that which separates us from NT's.

From what I can see, the three main problems are:

1) The person would be embarrassed if their mistakes are pointed out in front of the whole forum.
2) They'd take offense to it because you'd assume the other person was trying to seem better than you.
3) It doesn't matter anyway.

Allow me to address these issues:

1) If they'd be embarrassed having their mistakes pointed out to the forum, the PM function could be used.
2) This one makes no sense at all. Everyone makes mistakes, just because you happened to make one and someone else helped you out by correcting it, that doesn't mean the other person is infallible, and neither does it mean that the other person is acting like they are.
3) It does matter. As I said in the OP, literacy is an important skill. I don't want to grow up in a world where no one can write properly. I don't want to eventually be able to open books to see da writin lke dis. You might think that's just stupid, but if we as a society decide that literacy isn't important, this is what will eventually happen.

People don't like it simply because the corrector comes across as pedantic. It's even worse when it's a 16 year old kid doing it to boost their ego.

Lastly - This isn't school. Its like going up to a stranger in the street and telling then they're using bad English. They don't want to know, and they don't care. If you want to correct people's spelling and grammar, be a teacher, and that's really the end of it.

I do not comment on it unless its so bad it's not readable, or an adult speaking with the grammar of a 3 year old. Simply correcting a few words, that's pedantic.

Translation: adults feel bad when people who are of a younger age have better literacy skills than them.

A sixteen year old isn't a "kid" by the way, they're a young adult. After all, I can legally get married and have a family at my age.

But, I digress.

I got bashed for using text talk here when i first started.

The text talk, I can understand about. I now know where you're coming from. I thought that this post was about the importance if everybody typing posts at the same level and degree of difficulty. I really feel stupid, now. I apologize for the reactive posts that I've posted, yesterday.

You can't vote or drive a truck or drink though, sooo nyeeeer.

Yeah, some adults get hacked off at a 16 year old correcting their spelling. Some 16 year olds get hacked off at a 32 year old correcting their spelling. It doesn't really matter.

If you want to go around correcting other people's spelling, and you can handle the potentially negative results, knock yourself out! The world isn't going to collapse into some literacy deficient dark age any time soon though.

Exactly, I don't get why hale_bopp even brought age into it.



I didn't even say I wanted to, I just don't understand why it's considered such a bad thing to do.



Not soon, no, but if we've already decided that literacy isn't important, which some participants of this thread have indicated is what's happened, then it's only a matter of time.

What's wrong with a world where we all 'writ lik dat' (or whatever)? Don't get me wrong, I don't find it appealing, but I've never seen a convincing argument for it being some terrible thing.

Because it's horrible and it reduces the art of writing to nothing.

Even I know better than that, and I read and write at an 8th Grade level.

I mean come on. What do you think is better? A short quality post from someone who is borderline illiterate, or a 15 line paragraph filled with text speak that is posted by a University student?