Ask HN: Is it immoral not to correct someone else's grammar on social media?
No synthesized answer yet. Check the discussion below.
For what it is worth, I used to feel the urge to correct but as I have grown wiser in my years I now see many people smarter than me use grammar in ways i do not. Now i see people who correct others grammar and spelling as pedantic jerks.
Almost every social media system has some way to contact someone without shaming them in the public thread.
>People use grammar to judge your education and intelligence all the time.
You really shouldnt judge others; like ever.
>And so it would seem that failing to correct someone else's grammar online is not just unhelpful — it is immoral.
So you're saying correcting someone's grammar is helpful and moral?
Nobody is stopping you from doing this of course. If you believe it is moral to do, then do it.
Thanks for this. I often see folks like OP very condescendingly tell people they're not writing "correctly", while forgetting that English is a constantly evolving language -- at a certain point if a "mistake" becomes mainstream, it becomes an acceptable one.
(I'm struggling for more complex examples, but think of how people will say, declare "that's not a word"... well, usage of "not a word"s is how they end up going into the dictionary...)
I do judge spelling errors harshly, since most modern OSes will give a nasty red squiggle.
Anyways "immoral" is such a strong phrasing. Killing someone is immoral.
Letting someone argue their point badly is... well, I was raised Catholic so lets use that lens: Catholicism would refer to it as a "venial sin" -- you won't be going to hell for not correcting someone's grammar on the internet.
>... a "venial sin" -- you won't be going to hell ...
It hurts to read people use em dashes to break up the flow mid sentence. You're better off using a semicolon.
> I do judge spelling errors harshly, since most modern OSes will give a nasty red squiggle
Delete the comma to fix the comma splice and use because instead of since because you're not talking about a difference in time.
If you can offer genuine advice privately, then you can but otherwise if you feel it might come off as rude or pedantic, then I would shy away from it.
I err towards caution and wouldn't dare presume I'm qualified to correct others.
The same is true with Maths.
I think the other part of it, which is not trivial, is the rise of phones. People are typing on little keyboard and auto-correct can have a heavy hand. People don’t want to be judged for auto-correct getting one word wrong, invalidating a legitimate argument, so they look past potential auto-correct mistakes from others. The Internet has become much more tolerant of misspelling and mistakes, for better or worse.
If it’s a clear knowledge gap, then think a correction is helpful and warranted. For example someone saying “mute point” or “per say”. By all means, let them know. Ironically, auto-correct fixed both of those and I had to go out of my way to mess them up again.
Before the pearl clutching starts - I am Black.
On the other hand, as someone who has an A1-A2 fluency in Spanish and torture the language like you wouldn’t believe, I appreciate the grace I get from non English speakers when I try to communicate with them.
Who is “they”?