tepples's Journal: How to Correct Grammar Without Being a Nazi

"Let your speech always be with grace, seasoned with salt, that you may know how you ought to answer each one."--Colossians 4:6, NKJV.

In this post, h4rr4r wrote in a reply to a post by roman_mir:

SEAT the word you wanted was SEAT!

Sit is something you do in a seat. If this is some sort of non-american english, than deal with my correction as slashdot is an American site.

It appears roman_mir is not a native English speaker. Through the "Homepage" link in his profile, I found what appears to be his user page on Mozdev. Roman Mironenko's native language appears not to even be written with Latin letters.

On Slashdot and other web forums, a lot of people reply to comments just to correct the grammar, usage, or mechanics. It's more polite to phrase your correction as a throwaway bit at the beginning of your comment and then, with that out of the way, proceed to make a thoughtful reply to the comment's topic. This way, your comment is more likely to be seen as a sincere attempt to build another user up, rather than the sort of abrasive and inconsiderate personal attack on one's intelligence that has caused people to associate corrections with National Socialism.

Re:

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

h4rr4r is not a native English speaker either

[h4rr4r]

I am not a native English speaker.

I was abusive because Roman_Mir is normally a goldbug libertarian troll.

Thanks for the advice tepples, I will try to take it to heart.

Re:

[kermidge]

Spoken like a gentleman.

And thanks, tepples; gentle, helpful advice is a rarity these days.

Meanwhile, I search for the magic wand that would get people to understand and make use of the difference 'twixt "lose" and "loose" and a few other things that set my teeth on edge. Can't help it, raised in the '50s when the three R's were taken a bit more seriously - and one was graded on it. And I expect a losing battle with "aircrafts" not being the plural form, language being as fluid as it is. Still hits me li

Joy to the World

[tepples]

And I expect a losing battle with "aircrafts" not being the plural form

You're referring to words like "sheep", "fish", and "aircraft" that have an invariant plural form. That battle was lost in 1971 when Three Dog Night released its recording of a song written by Hoyt Axton [wikipedia.org] about a bullfrog named Jeremiah [nookipedia.com]. "Joy to the fishes in the deep blue sea, joy to you and me."

Re:

[kermidge]

Yeah, I know. Still rankles, tho. "Watercrafts, spacecrafts, aircrafts." Sheesh, hurts to even type that crap. Ah, well. I still mourn the loss of the adverbial form and substance, for all that matters. "We must act fast, blah, blah."

Re:

[cffrost]

And I expect a losing battle with "aircrafts" not being the plural form

You're referring to words like "sheep", "fish", and "aircraft" that have an invariant plural form. That battle was lost in 1971 when Three Dog Night released its recording of a song written by Hoyt Axton [wikipedia.org] about a bullfrog named Jeremiah [nookipedia.com]. "Joy to the fishes in the deep blue sea, joy to you and me."

I remember some time ago when the "fishes" issue came up on Slashdot, someone suggested that "fishes" may refer to multiple species of fish. http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/fishes [reference.com] also suggests that this use is acceptable.

Example

[phantomfive]

Do you have an example of the correct way to do it?

Examples from my own posting history

[tepples]

Here are several posts where I get the correction out of the way and then proceed to address the point made in the comment. In a discussion about vaccines [slashdot.org]:

Far? My sources say near. We were talking about vaccines, so I'll assume that by "tennis" you meant "tetanus". Wikipedia reports one million cases of tetanus per year. Significant autism spectrum characteristics (e.g. anywhere from Asperger syndrome to full-blown autism) may occur in up to six of every 1000 people. Given 134 million babies per year, that'

Re:

[phantomfive]

Correct their grammar, then tell them how wrong they are, eh?