Qualmless Nitpickery or How To Be A Reasonable Grammar Nazi

I like to think myself as an open-minded descriptivist when it comes to language, that is I think that there’s no such thing as right and wrong language, and that grammarians should only describe how language works, and not dictate what you can and can’t say (as a prescriptivist would). However, I have lurking just beneath the surface an inner Grammar Nazi armed with knowledge of the ‘rules’ of English, honed through a couple of years studying English Language in VCE, and it’s aching to get out and correct people at the slightest absent or superfluous apostrophe. This is my attempt to defend myself and argue that it is okay to correct people on occasion, even if I know that what they’ve said or written is not ‘wrong’ per se. These are my guidelines for when it’s ok to correct people’s English:

My overarching criterion is: Don’t be a dick. That is, don’t correct anyone if you feel like a dick doing so. This will always end badly; if they don’t want to be corrected and you don’t feel comfortable correcting them, don’t! This is usually the case in quite informal contexts where no-one cares what anyone says as long as they’re understood. No need to interfere here, don’t worry there are plenty of other opportunities to release your inner Grammar Nazi.

But now, let’s move on to where I think you can correct people. In my opinion, people can leave themselves wide open for correction in a variety of different ways. Firstly, if ever someone has been observed to correct other people for spelling or grammar, then they have clearly demonstrated by the golden rule, that they wish to be corrected back. Again, don’t be stupid, be reasonable, if someone picks up on the wrong ‘your/you’re’ it’s probably taking it a bit far to assume that they want to be notified of every infinitive they happen to split.

Another way in which I assume willingness to be corrected is if someone self-consciously uses archaic/overformal/other unusual language. Basically, I have very little sympathy for any mistakes that are made that could have easily been avoided by just talking normally. For example when Marieke Hardy writes ‘mein startled eyes’ when the archaic possessive adjective is ‘mine’ and only occurred before vowels anyway; or when my physics lecturer uses the latin plurals ‘minima’ or ‘quanta’ when she only means the singular; or when someone on the ABC’s Q&A program uses ‘whom’ when ‘who’ is the right word, I believe you are perfectly entitled to point out the flaws in their language.

Of course you can also correct for the correctee’s benefit, for while most of us aren’t phased by minor misdemeanors in language, there are definitely people out there who will look badly upon a stranded preposition or the like. For example, my mother is standing for election this Saturday, and so, in her election material, even if I don’t care and she doesn’t care, a reader might care about the language used, and it’s obviously beneficial for me to correct her language before it gets published, distributed and makes a bad impression on these people.

Lastly, there is nothing wrong with Australian English, it’s my favourite type of English, in fact I speak it every day, and I do think it would be a shame for us to let it be overrun by Americanisms. I have nothing against Americanisms, Americans can occasionally have nice ways of putting things, and there’s no problem with Americanisms being used whenever, provided there isn’t a perfectly good Australian equivalent that’s being eked out of existence. Australian terms are worth protecting, and so as long as you don’t contravene the first rule of not feeling like a dick, you should probably pull people up if they start talking about the letter ‘zee’ and other such terms.

I hope this makes sense, and that you agree with me that even though language might not be definitely ‘right’ or ‘wrong’ we can surely be justified in letting our inner Grammar Nazi stretch its legs once in a while.