Grammarnazi or: How I Learned To Stop Worrying And Love The Grocer's Apostrophe

[notintheseheels]

Picture the scene: I'm in my first year at Cambridge, must be quite early on as I'm still trying to fit in rather than disappearing to the pub with RockSoc/GothSoc types, and sitting in a college bar surrounded by students. I didn't feel qualified to join in with most conversations of an academic nature, sure I was too stupid and scared of the

Comments

[webcowgirl]

Thanks to spell checkers I do expect better spelling but I don't judge people's ideas by their spelling. God knows I make enough mistakes myself. That said, given when I review CVs it's for positions in quality assurance, I do expect them to be letter perfect.

[webcowgirl]

In other news, you wanna come over here for dinner or something some time in July? And might I convince you to come to the ballet with me? I have extra tickets for one show & need a date. Both/either?
Note I'm heading out of town in an hour and may be brain dead and incommunicado for a week or so.

[notintheseheels]

I would love to come to dinner, that would be great. Hopefully we can fit it in somewhere, I seem to be crazily busy until after BiCon. I'm afraid I don't really 'do' ballet, however, but thanks so much for the offer!

[dreamfracture]

Judging people based on anything other than a face-to-face conversation is generally a bad idea, and that includes their spelling and grammar. So yes, I agree completely, but it can be hard to stop mocking the grocer's apostrophe.

In related news, my brain has glitched and refuses to process that phrase as anything other than "grocer's apocalypse".

[farnam]

I am about as dyslexic as it is possible to be. As a result of small inevitable spelling errors creeping in to posts on the internet (never on lj though, I've a good bunch of friends here) I have been mocked and ridiculed. And in the process people totally ignoring what I have to actually say

[vyvyan]

I used to mark a lot of student essays about linguistics, and I also found it rather awkward being expected to indicate orthographical and grammatical "errors" which I didn't usually believe were errors at all, just variations on (often ill-defined) conventions. I did indicate them, generally, because as you say, many situations in their future will involve them being judged, albeit unfairly and unreasonably, on their adherence to those conventions, and I wanted to make those options available to them. However I always told the students that this was the reason I "corrected" their spellings etc., and not because I personally thought their writing was faulty.

[notintheseheels]

I'm late to reply to this, but I wanted to say thanks for your comment. I absolutely agree that it's very much a class issue. One of the reasons I can't stand grammar-bitching sessions on LJ is that I have NEVER seen one that hasn't descended into the most hideous classism. Sigh.