#1 ·
Chatting feels like a pretty "experimental setting" for testing things out. Not that anyone should be aiming for that, really. But why not mention the stuff we end up stumbling upon spontaneously...
One thing you can do in chat that you definitely wouldn't do face-to-face is correcting someone else's grammar. If we just toss out that old rule Noah Webster popularized about "writing how you speak"—which basically defines how we handle American English—then things could get a little blunt... Like, if we tell someone for the 1,000th time that they shouldn't write "should of" instead of "should have," and we do it for the 1,001st time, convincing ourselves that we’re just being "incredibly respectful of their individuality." By making that gesture (correcting grammar) we’re supposedly getting closer to that person, building a connection with a real human being... or are we just getting closer to some dead convention that we absolutely need if we want to be, let's be totally honest: functional. [1]
So, what do the people who play grammar police in chats and forums actually think?
And two questions for you:
- For the "tolerant" types—the ones who don't get annoyed: would you actually get mad if your partner[2] interrupted a spicy sext during the heat of the moment just to correct your spelling?
- And for the "tolerant" ones themselves... if you're constantly correcting people's grammar, would you stay true to yourselves during a hot chat and actually derail your partner from sex back to grammar just because they made a typo?
I'm curious if the people who feel the urge to "bring people back" to proper grammar think it's actually their job, like some kind of (!?!) moral obligation... and do they think these "patients" they're trying to "cure" of bad writing even care about writing correctly? I mean, do you think these people wouldn't be able to find the rules on their own if they actually wanted to, even without your help? Or do you think they have no way of knowing how to spell something unless you tell them, leading you to act like you're their only hope for literacy [3], justifying the whole gesture? Maybe you think human memory is just too weak, and even if they read books (at least through middle school), they just can't remember if certain words are joined or separate? If that's the case, why assume they'll remember it when you say it, when they didn't pick it up while reading the book? What's your take on human memory, folks?
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[1] Let's be real, anyone knows that a person using "couldve" expresses their ideas just as clearly as someone writing "could have." When someone writes it wrong, they aren't thinking "together" any differently than someone who writes it "separately." It's the exact same thought.
[2] Sexting, ... online roleplay, "what we'd do if we were alone and nobody was watching."
[3] ... (considering all the books where that person could easily see the correct way to write it) ....
One thing you can do in chat that you definitely wouldn't do face-to-face is correcting someone else's grammar. If we just toss out that old rule Noah Webster popularized about "writing how you speak"—which basically defines how we handle American English—then things could get a little blunt... Like, if we tell someone for the 1,000th time that they shouldn't write "should of" instead of "should have," and we do it for the 1,001st time, convincing ourselves that we’re just being "incredibly respectful of their individuality." By making that gesture (correcting grammar) we’re supposedly getting closer to that person, building a connection with a real human being... or are we just getting closer to some dead convention that we absolutely need if we want to be, let's be totally honest: functional. [1]
So, what do the people who play grammar police in chats and forums actually think?
And two questions for you:
- For the "tolerant" types—the ones who don't get annoyed: would you actually get mad if your partner[2] interrupted a spicy sext during the heat of the moment just to correct your spelling?
- And for the "tolerant" ones themselves... if you're constantly correcting people's grammar, would you stay true to yourselves during a hot chat and actually derail your partner from sex back to grammar just because they made a typo?
I'm curious if the people who feel the urge to "bring people back" to proper grammar think it's actually their job, like some kind of (!?!) moral obligation... and do they think these "patients" they're trying to "cure" of bad writing even care about writing correctly? I mean, do you think these people wouldn't be able to find the rules on their own if they actually wanted to, even without your help? Or do you think they have no way of knowing how to spell something unless you tell them, leading you to act like you're their only hope for literacy [3], justifying the whole gesture? Maybe you think human memory is just too weak, and even if they read books (at least through middle school), they just can't remember if certain words are joined or separate? If that's the case, why assume they'll remember it when you say it, when they didn't pick it up while reading the book? What's your take on human memory, folks?
_____________________
[1] Let's be real, anyone knows that a person using "couldve" expresses their ideas just as clearly as someone writing "could have." When someone writes it wrong, they aren't thinking "together" any differently than someone who writes it "separately." It's the exact same thought.
[2] Sexting, ... online roleplay, "what we'd do if we were alone and nobody was watching."
[3] ... (considering all the books where that person could easily see the correct way to write it) ....