Quite regularly, I've seen people react in a very hostile manner to having their posts corrected. Whether it's simple spelling or grammar mistakes or gross factual errors, some people seem to hate being corrected. I'm sure we've all seen posts such as "Who cars if my typin isnt perfekt dis r the internetz not gramer skool only fagets caer abut spellign", or have seen people fly off the handle because someone pointed out a fallacy in their reasoning.
Some seem to think that correcting someone is a sign of arrogance or elitism. While I can see how it sometimes comes across as such, that's more a matter of how you're being corrected than the correcting itself. If someone is all like "You fail at life because you made a typo! Go back to preschool, loser!" yeah, I'd be annoyed too. But most 'grammar Nazis' aren't really that extreme, and just don't like seeing other people make mistakes.
Because of the way people seem to be annoyed by such corrections, I don't really do it very often. I see a lot of people making mistakes in spelling and grammar and misusing words, but often I decide to not point out their mistakes because they're trivial and not worth annoying someone over, but it's an urge I have to suppress because seeing some mistakes pop up again and again is as annoying to me as the corrections are to others. I realise that most of the time the person making the mistake is not to blame. After all, to err is human. But having your mistake pointed out to you might help you prevent making the same mistake in the future.
Personally, I don't mind if people correct me. Nine out of ten times my mistakes are born of typos or ignorance. The first can happen to anyone and is no big deal to correct. In case of the latter, being corrected is an effective way to remedy that ignorance, so I take it as an opportunity to learn something new.
I was wondering how the average Escapist feels about this.
