Dear Grammar Nazis, Please Stop
Dear Grammar Nazis, I need you to stop.
First off, no one should ever compare themselves to a Nazi. Being anal-retentive about proper comma placement does not equate you to people responsible for trying to wipe entire religions and demographics off the planet. You don’t want to be that. It’s not funny. Stop.
Second, and this is probably the more important part for me, you’re not helping. At best, you’re going to come off as sanctimonious. At worst, you’re the guy who stands up in a departmental meeting to point out how much better you are at your job than everyone else in the room.
I get it. English is hard. Punctuation is hard. We could all use a little help. I’ve probably fucked up this post three times already. Lecturing people about the punctuation in their status updates does not ingratiate you to them. Has anyone ever thanked you when you pointed out that they mixed up ‘your’ and ‘you’re’? Maybe they edited the post following your well-intentioned comment, but it’s unlikely they were relieved that you pointed out their mistake.
In short, no one asked you.
A writer’s words are her tools, and grammar is the glue that holds the house together. I get that. I try hard. But sometimes I type so fast that a character pulls a wife out from under his coat instead of a knife, and there’s nothing I can do about it until it’s too late.
And sure, there are places where your role as a Grammar Enforcement Officer is important. If a friend, critique partner, or client asks for your advice, then you can red pen that sucker to your heart’s content!
But honestly, most of you are correcting messages written 140 characters at a time and created entirely by thumbs. It’s not that we don’t know the difference between ‘there’, ‘their’ and ‘they’re’. It’s that I try to type ‘few’, and my phone autocorrects it to ‘decontamination’. Seriously. That happened once. It also explains why BlackBerry lost the smartphone race, but that’s another post for another day.
In short, please stop. It’s not that we can’t handle criticism, it’s that this isn’t the place for it. Shaming someone’s social media grammar is like invoking Hitler in an argument. As soon as it happens, everything that follows is null and void. No one likes a Nazi. Don’t be that guy.
Allison Temple is a writer, novice cat lady, and expert couch potato from Toronto. Want more of this? Sign up for my mailing list here.
