Does anyone else suffer from a compulsion to correct English?
I've stopped my car to correct errors on marquees. I've scratched off apostrophes from signs where they were used with plurals. A sign painter in my previous hometown had a big sign out front that read SIGN'S. When I stopped to tell him, he said I wasn't the first (that was a relief), but he considered it just a difference of opinion.
My two professions — teacher and editor — have been enabling.
I come by it naturally. Both parents lamented the poor English of even educated professionals, and my dad even kept a notebook of the more egregious errors he came across in the course of the day.
Obviously, this is not an endearing quality. Has anyone found a way to manage such a compulsion? Are there support groups for this sort of thing?
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April
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April
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6 comments:
I wish my father would have been a little more like you. despite having excellent writing skills, he steadfastly refused to ever read over anything I had to write for school.
what's the point of having a dad who is an editor if he won't share his knowledge when you ask for it?
I am constantly amazed at the people who do not use your and you're correctly. A teacher told us years ago to substitute "you are" in the sentence, if it didn't make sense then "your" is the correct spelling. How simple, if they would just try it. Sometimes I get aggravated to the point that I stop reading when words are used incorrectly or misspelled repeatedly. A curse, or just some really good English teachers in our past??
Its and it's follows the same rule as your and you're; if you can substitute "it is", use an apostrophe. If not, don't. Please don't.
I, too, had parents who were sticklers on proper language use. I will be eternally grateful to them for that, but it has made it hard for me to read anything without editing. Some popular authors use such atrocious grammar, run-on sentences, redundancy, etc., that I can't even enjoy their books. I have to bite my tongue and curl my hand into a tight fist to keep from correcting signs in stores, especially when they spell a product name incorrectly and the actual product, with - surprise - the correct spelling, is right next to it. I've come to the conclusion that the great majority of people don't care to the point that they refuse to look something up. When I make a mistake, I'm horrified, because I don't want people to think I'm an ignorant, uneducated bum. Believe me, people do judge you by your language use. I'd rather not be found lacking.
I agree with Anya, although one thing my editor father gave me was the genetic impulse to correct signs as well. While I waited in Kuwait to head north to my new lovely home in Iraq, I noticed a sign on one of the small Taco Bell stands that said. "Sorry, Beans is not available."
I corrected it. Then I noticed that most most Kuwaiti and Iraqi made signs contained multiple errors, and now my fellow officers think I'm a nut because I constantly have to correct them.
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