merlin1949
New Member
- Messages
- 30
Firstly I am by Nature, upbringing and Education a Pedant.
Simply put a Pedant means nothing more than "Teacher" and originally carried no connotations of OCD like behaviour on the part of anyone so labelled.
It runs in the Family. My Brother (who resides in Cleveland, Ohio) is also a Pedant
Latterly, however, the word has become perjorative and carries connotations of someone who is super critical and unforgiving of anyone who tramples on their dearly held beliefs.
Forums are full of them. At least, the ones in the UK (which is where I currently live) certainly are.
Threads are full of Posts which contain terribly rude comments to posters like :-
"But then, why should I try to explain that to someone who can't even spell"
"It's called an apostrophe, chum, try getting someone to read the definition to you"
I think that correcting things like other posters' use of English grammar, punctuation, spelling etc. is rude and unnecessary UNLESS their phraseology was so tortured that it made their question or Post ambiguous. There are exceptions - using someone's own words to make a gerneral point (in a friendly way) or (and there is nothing more satisfying) correcting the English of someone who has posted and criticised someone else's English.
Being a newbie to these Forums, is this common of US Forums as well as the UK ?
Merlin
Simply put a Pedant means nothing more than "Teacher" and originally carried no connotations of OCD like behaviour on the part of anyone so labelled.
It runs in the Family. My Brother (who resides in Cleveland, Ohio) is also a Pedant
Latterly, however, the word has become perjorative and carries connotations of someone who is super critical and unforgiving of anyone who tramples on their dearly held beliefs.
Forums are full of them. At least, the ones in the UK (which is where I currently live) certainly are.
Threads are full of Posts which contain terribly rude comments to posters like :-
"But then, why should I try to explain that to someone who can't even spell"
"It's called an apostrophe, chum, try getting someone to read the definition to you"
I think that correcting things like other posters' use of English grammar, punctuation, spelling etc. is rude and unnecessary UNLESS their phraseology was so tortured that it made their question or Post ambiguous. There are exceptions - using someone's own words to make a gerneral point (in a friendly way) or (and there is nothing more satisfying) correcting the English of someone who has posted and criticised someone else's English.
Being a newbie to these Forums, is this common of US Forums as well as the UK ?
Merlin
My Computer
System One
-
- OS
- Win 8.1
- Computer type
- PC/Desktop