As a blogger myself, one of the BEST things about blogging is: it's my blog and I get to win. So do you, on your blog.

That said, to maintain one's credibility and readership, one has to be judicious in the use of words. I have read much of what you have written, (at least since Dr. Mike retweeted one of your comments and I thought I'd take a look) and in my opinion, you uphold this standard in spades.

I find that sometimes, when a person either can't understand the ideas presented, or just disagrees with them but is unable to construct a logical argument, he resorts to attacking the writer. It's likely that is what happened in this incident. I wonder if your prissy commenter would understand the meaning of argumentum ad hominem?

Your writing is easy to read, which I think is more important than grammatical perfection, though it doesn't hurt that I agree with much - if not most - of what you say :-) Clearly, we are both lovers of words, and understand that they are tools to be used, not masters to be submitted to. (Oops. I suppose this comment should be discarded, then, according to your prissy commenter, since my last sentence ended with a preposition!)

Jack-booted grammar thugs?

This is the sort of bloody nonsense up with which I will not put.

(The link is to an interesting short article at the Washington State University site on the quote above, originally attributed to Winston Churchill.)

My own policy when I see a really bad typo or incorrect usage is to email the blogger in question, if possible, but not to point it out in comments. A blogger friend recently missspelled straitjacket as straight jacket, and I pointed out correct usage in an email.

It is a common internet phenomenon for comment trolls to point out a typo when they can't match another individual's arguments, as if the typo invalidates the argument.

Was the commenters wording "Learn English more good" an attempt to be funny, I wonder?

I don't think it's interesting debate to point out a writer's flaws and this guy could quickly delve into troll territory. However, when I read something that is heavily riddled with grammatical mistakes or typos I find it hard to read b/c those mistakes are glaring and distracting. I also have a hard time taking the writer seriously. If the writer can't take the time to figure out the difference between their/there/they're and properly edit his/her work then I why should I be bothered reading that work?

Of course, I try not to be too nit-picky. I saw a comment on Jezebel the other day that said something like "I cannot stand when someone uses 'that' in reference to a human. It makes them seem like a mere object." (You'd really use "who" for a person: Any person *who* is that picky needs a life.) A blog item isn't going to be edited as well as a book (I hope books are well edited...) but if that's the biggest mistake in a blog piece then please let's just move on.

I always notice "that"/"who" errors, Gretchen, but I don't go grammar nanny and correct people when they make them -- verbally or on the Internet.

Of course something riddled with typos is going to be hard to read, and I appreciate when people point out when I've done one of those things I do when I'm tired and replaced, for example, "due" with "do," or "straight" with "strait," but those corrections come with a heap less snide. For this guy, it was about not having anything to correct in my thinking, and going picky -- and then being wrong about it.

I will almost always use the grammar that is common usage, and I also sometimes spell things the way it looks best. For example, "el cheapo" appears in the dictionary like so. I wrote it "el-cheapo" last week because it looked funny on the page without the dash.

Amy? As a bloggatrix do you get to dress all in black leather, and whip words into submission? Sounds like a good time.

My training is as an academic writer, and my habits reflect that. I'm careful with the "less" versus "fewer" distinction, I avoid using "they" as a gender neutral singular pronoun, and I'm unlikely to use "i.e." when I mean "e.g.," among other tics. But my internal editor's grammatical fussiness isn't going to make me more correct about something; if I'm wrong, I'm wrong. The opposite is also true; another's poor spelling or grammatical missteps don't make his points less cogent. Besides, these are friggin' blog comments, not a dissertation.

One related thing that does disappoint: I'm bummed that the phrase "begs the question" now means "raises the question," but I realize that is a lost cause.

"Billie" sounds like the bug up his butt grabbed the stick up his butt and beat him with it. (Stole that line from the old Ted Danson TV show Becker.)

I wonder how he feels about that soup that eats like a meal? Probably makes him utterly apoplectic.

And on "begs the question," I know what's technically correct, but again, common usage tends to change that in the minds of committees who decide what goes in a dictionary or usage book, and I'll usually go with common usage over rigidly correct usage.

If your point is to communicate with a wide range of people, that is a good approach. In this case, I'm just sorry to see a concise description of a particular logical fallacy go the way of the dodo. But the dynamicism of language means that old usages are lost and new ones created all the time. That's a lot of why I find language fascinating.

Like many, I have my pet peeves, as well.* However, it is a matter of substance over form. If they communicate their ideas, even if poorly, focus on the substance, not some misspelling or incorrect word choice. It is only if the poor word choice results in a failure to communicate clearly that it is an issue.

*Among my most annoying pet peeves: people who nit-pick in a political debate by saying "our country isn't a democracy, it's a constitutional republic." Or some such nonsense. Of course, there are no classic democracies around nowadays (or classical monarchies or aristocracies, for that matter). We all know that, but it is easy shorthand for a wide variety of "democratic" forms of government. And, if you understand my point, don't pretend to miss it.

/End rant.

-Jut

As a fellow dyslexic I can tell you it can be pure torture to read another dyslexics writing, or typing, but I let quite a bit go because of because of my own inability.. Those in glass houses......

And is it really up to me to be the worlds grammar nanny.. Just read things the best you can and if it still doesn't make any sense wait or ask for clarification..

I'm so glad you have addressed this issue. There are a lot of jerks out here that tend to attack spelling and grammatical errors when they can't find a good way to argue facts.
As someone that reads this blog frequently, I would comment more often than I do if it weren't for both my anxiety disorder and my dyslexia. The dyslexia tends to move my words around, which by itself really isn't that bad. It's when that anxiety kicks in and I start to worry that my words have come across wrong. I worry that I've spelled words incorrectly and I simply don't see my errors. I've seen other people criticized and mocked for typographical errors, so I worry that it could happen to me too. I worry that my words will betray my intelligence. At least in this particular corner of the Internet, I don't have to worry that I will use too big of words.
Instead, I type up a comment but never hit submit. If I don't type up a comment, I have a gnawing sensation inside about whatever it was that possessed my desire to comment in the first place.
I guess my point is especially sitting in the position I am, I never know what is going through another human's mind. Our perceptions are all different. It isn't nice to criticize errors when it is decipherable. It might have taken that person a good deal of time, energy, willpower, etc. to make that comment in the first place.

Quick, dry question:

"Catch fire," or "catch on fire?"

The latter always seemed ungrammatical to me, and I was a little perturbed to find the phrase used in a serious history of a WWII flying unit, thinking it was something an editor should have caught. Am I perturbed for no reason?

I try to not be to fussy about other people's glitches. It is annoying when someone TYPES IN ALL CAPS or writes a punctuation and paragraph break free word-wall.

I also admit that homophones drive me batty. When people use the wrong (but sounds the same) word.

Peek/pique/peak; seam/seem; wear/where; their/they're/there. For no reason I can justify, people using loose and lose interchangeably spikes my annoyance.

I don't nitpick the posts but I do feel twitchy.

Also, I help my high school age son edit his essays and reports and he always writes conversationally or informally. He cannot seem to figure out when it is inappropriate and how to modify his compositions.

At least he doesn't write them in txt tlk. My head would explode.

Old: Both are valid.

Amy: On "healthy", well, that sort of phrasing has always irked me, not because I think "it should be healthFUL", but because "food X is healthy" is almost meaningless.

No food is healthy (though some, like spoiled meat, might be unhealthy in the sense of being actually toxic).

Diets are relatively healthy or not, for individual circumstances.

When people (not you; think mommy-forum people) babble on on the internet about "X is unhealthy!" or "Y is super-healthy!" without those important qualifiers of how much, how often, and in what diet, it just tells me that they don't really have any idea what they're even trying to say.

Hahahahah! I typed to instead of too. Lazy me for not re-reading more carefully.

I actually despise this keyboard. Lots of typos now. It must be the keyboard!

Since this is a post about grammar, some of you may enjoy this other blog that I think is completely hilarious:
http://hyperboleandahalf.blogspot.com/2010/04/alot-is-better-than-you-at-everything.html

Pet peeves: Multiple exclamation points, posts that shout at you in capital letters, total (or almost total) lack of punctuation, and people who depend on their spellchecker a little too much.

Favorite language joke: Ricky Ricardo trying to read his son a fairy tale and mispronouncing the words through, though, thought, bough, and rough.

Ain't language fun?

Another pet peeve: "could of" when the write or speaker means "could've."

And the "less" for "fewer" thing grates on my ears.

Oh, Amy, I have the perfect word nerd site for you: http://www.savethewords.org/

I love how a little voice says "pick me" when you hover over one. Hilarious!

It was cowardly for Billie to go onto a tangent, of course.

But George Carlin was worth listening to when he condemned "popular usage" of certain words again and again. After all, if our standards of correct grammar are allowed to change as fast as they already do, it's not only frustrating for young children, foreigners and teachers; it makes it very difficult for people to recognize which people are truly qualified in any given field and which people are just lying about their education levels.

To put it another way: If news broadcasters - not to mention well-educated fictional characters in movies - were made to use scripts with flawless grammar (how about a ban on "gonna," for starters?), would it really take that long for proper grammar to become cool with at least a sizable portion of society?

(I DREAM of seeing at least one movie like that - one that takes place at least one century after 1899, that is!)

My problem is I swap letters around and cant telll the difference no mater how many times I proofread.

Also when/if I use a spell check program f it gives me a difeerent word entirely my brain cant graps that it is the wrong word.

When I was a kid and during puberty I used to see some letters in different colors, helped in school. In fact were it not for my high schol math teaher requiring we show every step in every equastions I dont know when I'd have figured out I was dyslexic.

Bad Spellers of the World Untie! ;-)

I do my best to ignore typographical errors (unless they don't make any sense). I'll do my best to ignore grammatical errors.

I'll generally even let them slide in conversation with friends unless they are long term. I have a technique to make them aware of the error, gently and most of my friends appreciate it.

I dont get whats so funny about uniting bad spellers

Oh, god damnit, never mind

Written word and the way the brain handles it is fascinating. As an eaxmlpe, eevn wehn the mdidle of wrdos is mssed up, it's not too hrad to raed as lnog as the frist and lsat letrtes are wehre tehy're spupsoed to be.

N ders ppl who cn rd txt s a perfcly nrml lngage. N jus s kwik 2. Its ezer f u rd d wrds s snds n dont try 2 recnize dem s hOl wrds. Kinda lIk rdng Mrk TwAn.

L33t 5p33k |5't th4t h4rd 0nc3 you 533 the p4tt3rn. Unl|k3 "txt spk," u h4v3 2 r3ly 0n th3 v|5u4l 5h4pe 0f th3 ch4r4ct3r5.

Bu7 |7 d035 h4v3 v4ry|n6 |)36r335 0f
|)|ff|(u17'/ b3(4u53 |7'5 n07 41w4'/5 4 0n3 for 0n3 5'/mb01 7r4n5147|0n.

Since l33t sp33k was 'developed' and is used to get around language filters in game, it's deliberately hard to read as whole words. But depending on whether you read whole words at a time, 'out loud' in your head, or one symbol at a time, some of these 'languages' will be more difficult to read than others.

Not that any of this has much to do with typos, dyslexia, and smart comments. It just fascinate me to watch language unfold and evolve in real time.

I always found grammar attacks a bit silly. Someone from another country or who for whatever reason has a weak grasp of English grammar could still have perfectly good insights on political, religious, scientific, etc. topics...

Ellie, that third paragraph was hard! Took me a minute because I wanted the 7s to be Ls, not Ts...

The only time I'll get on somebody's spelling or grammatical errors on a blog - or more specifically in the comments - is when they're busy pointing out how everybody else is so damn stupid.

So, youd criticize the spelling of a person questioning the intellegence of the guy claiming magical trolls keep stealing his underwear?