Correcting people wins you no friends...

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Oh, crap.

Good fortune,

- Icarus means well, but just can't help it...

I usually am a bit more tactful than that, or I have to really hold my tongue with people, but yes you are right...people don't care for being corrected.

I would have just gone with the flow.

I have a really hard time not correcting language misuse, whether spoken or written.
On the plus side, my husband's spelling and vocabulary have improved since we met.

This thread has made me laugh because I can totally relate to it. I think I'm much better now, but when I was younger I used to correct people at lot-I think it's actually supposed to be an Aspie trait. I somehow or other finally realized that it wasn't appreciated, and now I catch myself and actively think through whether or not I should say anything. Hard keeping my mouth shut sometimes

I have trouble with complements too, although I like them. (Just this week at this OCD meeting I went to for the first time a woman complimented me on how much I'd over come it, and I said "oh I don't know about that, I think I may have gotten worse in other ways" and went on like that )

I don't accept complements, and until just now I never thought I was being impolite.
I usually say something negative about the thing that has just been complemented.
I think I'm trying to show the person that I am not better than them. I'm trying to equalize our standing....does that make sense? But I do get weird looks and now I know why, so thanks.
I sometimes also tell people where I bought something, and whether I think the store is still stocking it. God, what an a** I am!

I found that once I was able to not let people's insults and criticism bother me, I was less able to accept compliments of any sort. I had put up a barrier, not a filter.

I'm a bit of a grammar nazi. I used to correct people's grammatical errors all the time - until I figured out that it really annoys people, so I tried to cut back a bit.

yeah i noticed that, never correct anybody no matter what it will just piss people off, lol

I cannot STAND when people make obvious spelling errors, and to a lesser extent, grammatical errors (and I mean where you actually mispell it, not typing too fast). Or when people repeat some falsehood as fact.

when I correct people, I explain it and give some sort of history of whatever the error was, and half the time the response is, wow that is really interesting--because I'm usually tactful and polite and don't go overboard, and people are generally amazed that some person actually knows about the subject.

But then sometimes I don't know a person too well and they make some stupid error that drives me crazy. Last night a guy I don't know too well was at the pub with me and some people and he pronounced the word "ladle" (LAY-DUL), (the thing you scoop soup with) as "LA-DUL" (the LA being like "lap" without the P. I let it go and then he said it twice more and I said, "you mean lay-dul?" he didn't respond. He was just one of those people that grate on me anyway.

I've gotten to the point where I don't care about alienating people. I care more about truth than friendship, because any friend of mine will also value truth more--within reason of course, there is no reason to be rude. But some people propogate the worst error. You do need to find a balance. I think a good rule is that if you find you can't correct someone without alienating them, you should make a concious effort to not correct error. HOWEVER, if you are able to do it in a socially acceptable way, there's nothing wrong with doing it, just watch yourself--that's my thought, and what I try to do--sometimes I do go overboard, but the positive reactions I get generally outweigh the negative ones

The same thing goes on in my mind as well and I cannot understand why someone wants to sound like an ignorant yokel. However, I'm learning that correcting people gets one into more trouble than simply leaving the mistake alone. So, I grit my teeth and let their mistakes go uncorrected...what a terribly difficult thing to do!

It's definitely true that correcting people,especially in front of others,can almost be
equated with an insult. What annoys me is that some people in the social hierarchy
can seem to get away with it and no-one bats an eyelid.I've discovered I can't get
away with it myself,so I try to find ways of sending people coded messages to
make them aware of anything that I know for certain isn't correct.

I'm constantly restraining myself from correcting people. I try not to do it because the person will usually either:

a) Get offended

b) Try to argue that they are right and I am wrong

c) Express that they don't care

Therefore it is futile. But at least I can tell my boyfriend about it later. He always wants to correct people too, about the same things.

Replace "complement" with "compliment" in my previous post.
Thanks for not correcting me.

According to the wikipedia:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ceil

Ceil is a pale blue color, often associated with surgical scrubs.

So, you are way off if you consider ceil to be a shade of purple.

sigh. i do it all the time. i try to hold back, and that leaves me biting my lips (literally) till they sometimes bleed.

sometimes i do not mean to correct, but clarify what other people mean. oftentimes i take things too literally so i'm never sure if the message i've heard/understood is what is meant to be conveyed.

couple that with a dyslexic boyfriend, and you get hours of endless 'fun'. i'm grateful he's understanding about this bad habit (compulsion) of mine and regards my corrections as learning opportunities.