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.
Well, I'd say that branding every person who is annoyed by frequent use of [no punctuation], [Lolspeak], [extremely frequent mistypes] as a grammar nazi is taking it much too far.
ReplyDeletefur example whil sum ppl r liek totalee dislekscic most ppl ar nut and zen yu hav to assk whay zey r typin liek dis Mebee it iz becuase zey hav totalee liek non regard fur the othr ppl an dunt carre if zey have difcultiez reedin ze teksts or nut.
So would anyone being annoyed at reading the paragraph above be a grammar nazi?
The thing is, written text is more or less the only thing from which you can make an opinion of the poster. Sure, if both of you are frequent posters on a forum, or know each other otherwise, then you can consider his opinions, but for, say, a first-time poster, you only have the structure and content of the text to thing about.
Furthermore, a well-made post implies that the poster actually took the effort in creating it. This, in turn, shows a level of respect - or regard - for anyone who will be reading the text subsequently. Referring again to my example paragraph, if that was the only thing I'd have written, would you think I cared the slightest bit about anyone? Taking it to a rather unhealthy extreme to make the point, a very badly structured text, filled with lolspeak, 'cool' mistypes and whatnot is a giant middle finger to the reader.
As for why there is no outrage at branding people 'nazis', well, it could be due to the fact that real 'grammar nazis' - people who fit the stereotype fully - are so used to throwing insults around and trolling others that they don't care about that detail. Personally, I would find it somewhat offensive to be branded a nazi of any kind, even a 'teddy-bear hugging nazi'.
In any case, what I wanted to say is that not everyone pointing out grammar mistakes is a 'grammar nazi' - you always have to consider all factors - such as the original post in question, for one.
Is there a stereotype for people who claim that everyone else is a Grammer Nazi?
It's not "Dyslexic", Antilogic, it's "Dyslectic." If the condition ends in "xia", the rule in Latin is to make the adjectival form "ctic". So, Dyslexia = Dyslectic, Anorexia = Anorectic, Dyspraxia = Dyspractic etc.
ReplyDeleteGeeze, get it right!
:D