this post was submitted on 25 Jun 2023
244 points (89.4% liked)
Asklemmy
43948 readers
946 users here now
A loosely moderated place to ask open-ended questions
Search asklemmy ๐
If your post meets the following criteria, it's welcome here!
- Open-ended question
- Not offensive: at this point, we do not have the bandwidth to moderate overtly political discussions. Assume best intent and be excellent to each other.
- Not regarding using or support for Lemmy: context, see the list of support communities and tools for finding communities below
- Not ad nauseam inducing: please make sure it is a question that would be new to most members
- An actual topic of discussion
Looking for support?
Looking for a community?
- Lemmyverse: community search
- sub.rehab: maps old subreddits to fediverse options, marks official as such
- !lemmy411@lemmy.ca: a community for finding communities
~Icon~ ~by~ ~@Double_A@discuss.tchncs.de~
founded 5 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
Why is this so common? It drives me nuts.
Because of all the 'um actually' corrections from people whenever they'd say "Tom and me bought drinks." And not just to the point one starts thinking it's always "Tom and I" - I've had people 'correct' my 'to Tom and me', as well, because they think "Tom and me" is always incorrect.
This is also why I don't make a big deal about correcting others' grammar; it's often a tool people use to feel smarter (and thus superior) to other people. Language is a communication tool; if I know what you mean and there's limited ambiguity then I don't much care if you said 'would of' instead of 'would've'; and certainly not enough to interrupt a conversation to correct it.
Besides, between autocorrect, typos, and the brain's weird word-association tricks, a linguistics professor is capable of making significant grammar mistakes and not even notice, even if they'd know they were wrong if pointed out. So swooping in to tell them "hey you did this thing slightly wrong" in lieu of engaging with their intended point is not meaningful contribution.
Yes exactly. I didn't mention it above but it seems like the people who use "and I" incorrectly are the same ones trying to sound smarter by being more "proper" or formal. I agree people should just focus on the content of the message. I would not correct anyone in real life, but secretly inwardly it drives me crazy.
Yeah, that's exactly what makes it sound poorly educated to me.