Urban dictionary says a Grammar Nazi is “A captious individual who cannot resist the urge to correct a spelling and/or grammar mistake even in informal settings. After pointing out the linguistic shortcomings in others, a Grammar Nazi feels a strange sense of twisted and unconstructive intelligentsia delight.”
The Grammar Nazi, as the name suggests, is often pictured as a German Nazi carrying out a campaign against poor spelling and punctuation rather than the armies of the allies. Grammar Nazis can often cause offence, even when technically they may be in the right. However, rather surprisingly, associating the world “Nazi” with people who are a stickler for good grammar doesn’t appear to cause a huge amount of offence.
There are multiple levels of Grammar Nazis, from the publicly over the top to those that prefer to spend their time correcting friends and family. Some people can and do take offence at Grammar Nazis. As well as it being possibility considerably rude depending on the situation at the time, some people with learning disabilities such as dyslexia often take offence at Grammar Nazis, and sometimes are forced into defensive action in an attempt to defend themselves from what can be considered as in the above link, as a “type of bullying/elitism”.
Personally, as a dyslexic myself, I can understand that point of view. It can be extremely frustrating to put a lot of effort into something to have it summarily dismissed due to someone else’s inability to look beyond a few minor grammar or punctuation mistakes. However there are things that both sides can do in an attempt to lessen the amount of fuel being thrown on the fire.
Dyslexics can, and should - along with everyone else actually - use tools such as Word’s spelling and grammar check. While such tools are not perfect by any means, they can assist in correcting some of the basic mistakes that it is easy for anyone to make. When you are writing something of relative importance (as such a dissertation for your university degree), it is extremely important to pay extra attention to how well the spelling and grammar in the text comes across.
Grammar Nazis can help by cooling their temperaments a little. They should bear in mind that not everything is of overwhelming enough importance to risk annoying people, and in some cases even causing rifts in friendships, to go around correcting everything someone else says or writes at all times.
Of course there is the worst type of Grammar Nazi. When dealing with a Grammar Nazi that cannot achieve passable literacy themselves, there are very few options. I would suggest sterilisation as a bare minimum.
