An interest of mine is frequently trivialized and belittled

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As you can tell from my username, I enjoy grammar and English in general. I used to have a real problem correcting people’s grammar, but I’ve gotten better at that. But I still sometimes correct people in online chat servers if they make the same mistake all the time. As you may guess, this rarely goes over well.

My sadness about this is twofold: First, I don’t understand why so many people hate being corrected. I’ve read theories about this, like it reduces people’s social status in others’ eyes, or it makes them feel stupid. I just never understood this. If I’m corrected about something, I’m glad, because it means I learned something and I can put it to use and not seem ignorant about that particular thing again. But nobody else seems to share this view. They just want to remain clueless about what is proper English.

And that leads me to my second problem: People tell me that grammar isn’t important and it doesn’t matter how they write something as long as others understand. When I correct people, they think I’m trying to sound smart, which isn’t the case at all. I just want to help them learn something. And I don’t know how to respond to this. Maybe it’s not important? Maybe I should just try to let it go and let people be ignorant as long as other people know what they’re writing about? But this passion, this skill I have, it’s one of the few things that brings me joy. I love copy-editing papers, but to be repeatedly told that grammar is useless is like a dagger to my heart. It really hurts.

I just want to help people...

There is no such thing a "proper English" there is standard English.

Here in Liverpool and many other parts of the UK we will say "me mum" instead of "my mum" this is not incorrect English this is how we have always spoken.

I'm an English teacher in China and most foreigners who live in China are English teachers. That doesn't mean they know a lot about English though because, honestly, the requirements for being an English teacher in this country isn't very high. As in you just need a bachelor's degree and you're set here.

Not that you need to know a lot about English to be a teacher here anyway; most people are just teaching kids and helping them make sure they get basic sentences right.

That didn't stop me from pissing people off by asking them a bunch of obscure English grammar questions ^^

There's this one foreign bar and the owner asked me to host trivia. So, of course I had the idea of doing one about grammar rules. Since everyone at the bar was an English teacher, I felt like they should know these things.

When one of the questions involved identifying the sentence with the subjunctive mood, they got pissed

Probably mean on my part but I think I was just trying to show that China is kind of letting anybody teach in China and I think this is a problem.

I guess the point is even when actually helping people learn English is their profession, they kind of really don't care. But I take on more of a descriptivist attitude towards grammar anyway and I think that makes languages even more interesting because you get to see how it changes over time and how even different dialects from different regions actually follow different grammar rules.

I think that's one way you can look at it.

As for correcting people, that's pretty hard to do because a lot of people think of grammar as something arbitrary and people who follow the rules for it and correct people are being pedantic. What makes it weird is when someone like my dad will get upset about people not following grammar rules but, whenever I listen to him talk, his grammar isn't perfect either.

I guess the best I can say is when you're helping people edit their paper or something like that, knowing grammar this well is a good skill to have and it's a good time to help them make corrections. Other times, people like to focus more on the flow of the conversation and anything that disrupts that flow makes it difficult to talk to people so maybe it's not the best time to talk about grammar.

People don’t like to be corrected—because they feel “trivialized and belittled” when someone corrects them. Especially when the correction occurs among other people.

In essence, they feel embarrassed and ashamed.

That’s the crux of it.

Your upset because they're grammar ain't write?

Being an Aspergian/Autistic person involves learning to "pick your spots."

Learning to "know your audience."

It takes us a little longer for us to "pick our spots" and "learn our audience" than so-called "neurotypical" people. But we have the cognition to learn this.

I was pretty bad at this when I was in my 20s. I KNEW that Alabama was south of Tennessee---but this woman kept on insisting otherwise. I kept on hammering the point that Alabama is SOUTH of Tennessee. She just wouldn't hear it. She got hostile. It wasn't a good scene.

I should have just let it alone, and encouraged her to do her own research.

One of my friends from some time back had often said the following: "British English is proper English."

British English is British English. American English is American English.

"Spell check" would say that "colour" is an incorrect spelling.

I am a grammar pedant myself, but I tend to keep quiet when I hear or see any bad examples. English is a living language and usage constantly changes the rules. Read some novels from the eighteenth or nineteenth century and revel in the language used. That includes American novels, "Moby Dick" is my all time favourite/favorite.

Yep...should have mentioned that. English is a "living language," always in flux.

Ok, so my Mom family have explained this to me time and again, and I get it now.

People who get the most offended by being corrected are upset because they already know the rule, but they made a mistake and don't want to admit it.

It hurts my Mom's feelings when I correct her, but she's too proud to admit that it hurts, which means she gets defensive.

My Dad had a bad habit of correcting others on purpose to intentionally make them feel ashamed, and Mom thought for a long time that's what I was doing.

Most people know someone who does like my Dad, and they assume that everyone has the same reason.

I've learned to pardon the phrase, but I've learned to "sit on my hands" for lack of a better word, when I feel the urge to correct people.

I know it hurts when people tell you to just not do a thing, but in most instances in my life I've learned to just give in to the neurotypical solution, then to be mocked for doing what "feels" normal for me.

In hind-sight, maybe I would have been diagnosed years ago if I'd gone with my gut more often.

If it makes you feel bad, don't do it. This is one of the rules I live by, and I'm gonna share it with you so you know I'm not attempting to tell you to "pretend to be normal" cause I'm not.

I hope I helped to explain the neurotypical reasoning some at least.

K

^^That was pretty good

Another reason why people get upset when corrected: You're not paying attention to the point the speaker is trying to make. It shows them you weren't actually listening to the message, you were just waiting to nit pick how they said it.

A good listener just listens and then responds to the overall message.

It isn't helping others if the help you're foisting on them isn't something they want or need. Admit it: you correct others out of your inner sense of "rightness" that won't let you do otherwise. The inability to let others express themselves in their own way is a character fault, not evidence of altruism.

Mom used to call herself the "guerilla grammarian". But her victims were usually newscasters on the tube, and not real folks around us when she would make admonishments.

Have inherited a little bit. Someone on WP told a dramatic story that happened to them. And wrote that "the gun was just laying there".

I had to bite my tongue, and NOT correct her by saying "lying! Not 'laying'. A gun lies on the ground. A surrendering army lays its' guns down.".