Defender of Writing

Have you ever dared correct someone’s spelling or grammar on social media? I have. Invariably a flock of angry people will bombard you with comments like “grammar nazi” or “as if that matters” or “way to miss the point of the post entirely” or worse, accuse you of racism or ableism by screaming “not everyone’s first language is English!” or “have you thought that maybe the OP is disabled and that’s the best they can do?“

Yes, yes I have thought of all those things and yet I still think it should be ok to comment.

If someone posted 2 plus 2 equals 756, people might comment “no that’s wrong” and not be accused of being racist or ableist. And if someone posted a fake historical fact like “Britney Spears is dead!” Or “The Battle of Hastings was in 1077!” Again people would correct this and that would be ok. But tell someone on social media that in this context they should be using “than, not then”…wowzer…get ready to be slaughtered.

It’s almost as if people don’t consider Linguistics – the science of language – a legitimate science. It’s almost as if people don’t consider language a legitimate interest. In fact it’s EXACTLY like that.

I make plenty of writing errors and typos. For sure there are probably several in this post. Go ahead, let me know where they are. I won’t condemn you. I promise.