Grammar Snobs Might Be Assholes
But if our writing sucks, no one will read it.
I have a confession to make: I hate grammar snobs, which is funny because I used to be one. Back when I was getting my MA in creative writing, I would just about lose my shit every time I found a, gasp, dangling modifier or a, double gasp, comma splice in whatever piece I was reading.
I was constantly running to the comments to bitch about the grammar and spelling mistakes I found in online writers’ works — writers who might or might not have had the privilege of being as formally educated as me.
Yeah. I was that asshole.
No Longer a Stickler
Fast forward a few years, and some real-world experience in editing, tutoring, marketing content, and technical writing had calmed me way down. I still had my pet peeves, to be sure. Yet I no longer felt the overwhelming compulsion to wag my finger at everyone who didn’t know that commas aren’t for pauses and that you’re not supposed to willy-nilly shove one between your subject and its verbs or modifiers because you randomly feel like it.
Of course, this stuff still annoys me on occasion, but I no longer think that a couple of mistakes in a published piece automatically render it rubbish.
In fact, I’ve mostly accepted that it’s normal to have a few typos and comma mistakes peppered throughout an online article. Blogging is a numbers game, after all, and pumping out large volumes of content in a short time frame is a surefire way to let editing fall by the wayside. It doesn’t preclude most writers from communicating what they want to say or even making good money.
Most readers don’t notice common misspellings or comma errors anyway because they don’t know the rules themselves. Blogs aren’t books or scholarly articles. They’re a more casual medium, so the standards are lower, and grammar sticklers (like my past self) who cannot see that need to dig the sticks out of their asses.
Anyone who focuses too heavily on a few sparse grammar errors probably doesn’t have a stronger criticism than that anyhow.
I’ve noticed this issue a lot in social justice pieces. Someone will write something about systemic racism or patriarchal oppression, and there’s always the white and/or male asshole who comes along to complain that the writer said “insure” when they meant “ensure” or spelled it “towards” when they’re using North American English.
It’s obvious they want to criticize the piece without engaging with the content because, if they did engage with the actual content, they’d have a pretty flimsy leg to stand on. So they just whine about typos.
Now that I see what a dick move that is, I’m glad I’m no longer counted among these assholes.
Grammar Goofs
On the other hand, there are only so many grammar errors a gal can take. I cannot count the number of times I have almost immediately ditched an article that I might’ve otherwise finished because the writing was just plain unreadable.
I’m not talking about a single “there/their/they’re” screwup or a poor comma placement. I’m talking about multiple errors per sentence, awkward phrasing, word repetition, and a shitstorm of other annoying habits that suck the pleasure — and maybe even the comprehension — out of reading.
Some of these articles seem written by bots. They’ve got all the hallmarks of AI writing, including redundancy, rambling, incoherence, tangents, unnatural language, failure to transition, and a lack of opinion or subjective personal experience.
Some of them, however, were obviously written by humans who have no business hitting the publish button until they’ve learned to proofread.
I won’t call anyone out (for obvious reasons), but, to me, there’s a big difference between being in a rush to publish while editing your blog and trying to write when you don’t know the first thing about writing.
I’m not going to be that elitist bitch who says nobody should write if they don’t have a formal education in the subject. The beauty — and peril — of the internet is that it democratizes communication by offering a platform to everyone.
However, a blogger clicking “publish” doesn’t mean everyone scrolling by has to click “read.” A great way to ensure that doesn’t happen is publishing rambling screeds with enough grammar errors to render them indecipherable to the average audience member — not to mention downright infuriating to other writers.
Avoiding Blogging Blunders
Grammar exists for a reason. It creates consistency and provides clarity to everyone who speaks a common language. Some of its rules are made to be broken — like the one that says prepositions aren’t words you can end sentences with. Other rules, however, are pretty hard and fast because words start to make less and less sense without some form of standardization.
Even worse, too many errors wreck the quality of everyone’s writing, rendering it unclear or, worse still, not worth reading. A couple of grammatical errors are tolerable (and maybe even unnoticeable), but making too many errors is just plain bad writing.
The good news is the internet has democratized knowledge alongside communication. Plenty of folks complain about the internet killing expertise, and they have a point, but the flip side is that it also enables anyone to make themselves a passable expert with some hard work and dedication.
Thus, if you want to know how to write well, you don’t need to plunk down thousands of dollars on a high-end piece of paper that has the words “Bachelor” or “Master” on it.
There are plenty of books on writing that cost a few bucks — or nothing at all. There are also videos and articles all over the place that can teach you everything from correct comma usage to sentence structure variety to common wrong word errors that spell checkers don’t always catch. All you have to do is Google.
Learning this stuff is especially important in English, one of the planet’s languages that plays fastest and loosest with the word “rules.”
So listen to this heartfelt plea from a former grammar snob: if you want to write online, go for it! But first, use the internet to learn how to write on the internet. That way, you won’t chase off your readers with the first paragraph.