Correcting Grammar is Rude (and I’m Here to Tell You Why)

There is an interesting divide between the folks who correct spelling and grammar online and those that don’t, and those that correct grammar online are almost always those who don’t get paid to do it. You’d think it would be the other way around until you consider that’s a paid service. People don’t tend to give their services away for free but that’s also not the only reason. For many, “correct” spelling and grammar are hidden hallmarks of a particular kind of person, a person who speaks American Standard English, who had access to a robust education, and who don’t struggle with a disability. Let’s unpack why this is.  

Authors and editors get paid on how well they write and that’s not something that people give away for free. When your ability to pay bills and eat lives and dies by your ability to construct pose and turn out a manuscript with a minimum of errors, it’s not worth it to hop online and do it more for free. Editors as well live and die by their ability to catch the mistakes writers of all flavors miss, and they’re also not giving that away for free. Because if they do it for free, they don’t get paid. That’s one less bill taken care of, that’s food out of their family’s mouths. That’s less gas to get to the store, prescriptions picked up (I am assuming here that this person is born and raised in the US based on previous interactions I’ve seen online) and just less money overall. 

Another problem is that school districts are not funded the same. When your zip code is an accurate predictor of whether you’ll go to college, it’s easy to extrapolate that underfunded schools are a leading cause of many problems, struggles with grammar and spelling included. Not everyone is blessed to have gone to school with a robust education plan, and not everyone went home to parents who could or would help them with homework. There is a lot of discourse over the so called “self-made man” but not all subjects are easy to learn or are easy to teach yourself. Assuming that kids go to school to get taught things and go home to parents who help them is a classist argument. This is especially telling since many who claim to be self-made have had a support network designed to help them excel, another hallmark of wealth and privilege, which is classist. 

Not only is it classist its also racist. Schools that are chronically underfunded tend to be schools with a high number of kids of color, and that’s not by accident. Problems like redlining have had a profound impact on the education kids get. But that’s not the only form of racism found in correcting spelling and grammar. The English taught in the US school system is American Standard English, which is only one of many different dialects. AAVE (African American Vernacular English) is another dialect, and it’s just as valid. The reason I’m singling out these two dialects in particular is because it’s almost always people using American Standard to pick on people using AAVE, which is racist. American Standard isn’t the same as UK English either, but it does get a bit of similar pushback until the person doing the correcting finds out what it is they’re correcting. Its at that point with UK dialects the argument often gets dropped. Not so much when people correct AAVE even though it’s just as valid. People might not be intending to be racist, but that’s not a defense. Racism isn’t always white hoods and lynchings, and can frequently present as macroaggressions like correcting spelling and grammar.  

Correcting people is also rude because it’s ableist. Dyslexia is a common disability many people struggle with but not everyone gets the tools to learn how to manage it which ties a lot into the funding I was just discussing. Many kids fall through the cracks every year, for a variety of reasons. It’s not stupidity. It’s incredibly difficult to teach yourself anything when you have a disability and assuming everyone had access to the same resources you did growing up is ableist.  

Not to mention it’s just rude. No one cares that you seem to know better and pretending you do is, frankly, exhausting. If they’re using an argument that’s flawed, attack the argument. While that person might not care, those around you will and they just might. Maybe they have an invisible disability like dyslexia. Maybe they didn’t have access to the same quality of education you did. Maybe they’re a person of color. Regardless, people notice, and correcting someone’s spelling and grammar says a lot about whether you’re a safe person or not. And don’t we all want to be safe people?