ARTICLE: Should We Care About Grammar and Spelling on Twitter?
Should We Care About Grammar and Spelling on Twitter?
Many people assume I am a guardian of grammar. The typical plane-ride conversation goes like this: “What do you do?”” “I am an English professor” “Oh! I better watch my grammar.”
Their worries are unfounded. I wouldn't flinch if they were to split an infinitive, use the singular "they," or dangle modifiers. I don't get huffy when I read grammatical mistakes in blogs—and I certainly don't care when I see them on Twitter. So when The New York Timesran a lengthy article about grammar trolls on Twitter, I could only think of the wasted column inches. John Cusack misspells "breakfast"; "your" is used instead of "you’re"; semi-colons are used with dependent clauses. Does it really matter?
To many it does. GrammarCop (@GrammarCop) corrects people's tweets, but a common error GrammarCop likes to correct is the misspelling of grammar as "grammer," which is not a grammatical mistake but a spelling one. YourorYoure (@YouorYoure) jumps on those who mistake one word for the other by reposting tweets placing "[Wrong!]" in front of them—but drops the apostrophe in "you're" in his or her handle. YouorYoure's profile sends you to a webpage that explains the rule.
Nothing elicits comments like a story on grammar (are you composing your response to me right now? Does it begin "You are an idiot"?). William Safire has said that his column that inspired the most reader letters was a piece about grammar. Joseph Epstein has a column in the Weekly Standard on the long letters readers used to send him pointing out typos and errors in his books. And the Times article was quickly weighed down with 135 “Yeah! I hate bad grammar!” and “We are all becoming illiterate” comments.
Their worries are unfounded. I wouldn't flinch if they were to split an infinitive, use the singular "they," or dangle modifiers. I don't get huffy when I read grammatical mistakes in blogs—and I certainly don't care when I see them on Twitter. So when The New York Timesran a lengthy article about grammar trolls on Twitter, I could only think of the wasted column inches. John Cusack misspells "breakfast"; "your" is used instead of "you’re"; semi-colons are used with dependent clauses. Does it really matter?
To many it does. GrammarCop (@GrammarCop) corrects people's tweets, but a common error GrammarCop likes to correct is the misspelling of grammar as "grammer," which is not a grammatical mistake but a spelling one. YourorYoure (@YouorYoure) jumps on those who mistake one word for the other by reposting tweets placing "[Wrong!]" in front of them—but drops the apostrophe in "you're" in his or her handle. YouorYoure's profile sends you to a webpage that explains the rule.
Nothing elicits comments like a story on grammar (are you composing your response to me right now? Does it begin "You are an idiot"?). William Safire has said that his column that inspired the most reader letters was a piece about grammar. Joseph Epstein has a column in the Weekly Standard on the long letters readers used to send him pointing out typos and errors in his books. And the Times article was quickly weighed down with 135 “Yeah! I hate bad grammar!” and “We are all becoming illiterate” comments.
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