30 Internet Know-It-Alls Who Embarrassed Themselves By Correcting Others

Correcting others' bad grammar online is probably the most common offense of the internet's know-it-alls. Maybe even you, Pandas, have pointed out someone's faulty spelling in a comment section somewhere? If you had, you're in good company: many Americans admit to doing the same.

In fact, according to a 2014 YouGov poll, 21% of Americans consider themselves to be part of the online grammar police. Younger Americans, specifically those under 30, said they were more likely to habitually correct the grammar of others. 

Ironically, grammar correctors make mistakes too, as you'll see from the many examples in this list. The same YouGov poll also showed that only 60% of the respondents were able to identify the incorrect use of "it's" and "its" in the sentence "My oak tree loses its leaves in autumn."

Interestingly, younger respondents were, again, more successful. 70% of the under-30s made the right correction, while only 56% of over-65s did the same. Other common spelling mistakes people make involve the words "who" vs. "whom," "which" vs. "that," and "affect" vs. "effect."

Those who belong to the online grammar police also have some common personality traits. In 2016, researchers analyzed the habitual grammar correctors and found that they tend to be more judgmental of other people.

According to the researchers, extroverts were more likely to overlook grammar mistakes in an email responding to an online ad looking for a roommate. Introverts, on the other hand, were more likely to judge the author of the ad.

Those sensitive to grammar mistakes were also found to be more disagreeable. "Less agreeable participants showed more sensitivity to grammar than participants high in agreeability, perhaps because less agreeable people are less tolerant of deviations from convention."

There is also a difference between correcting a person with the intent of teaching them and just asserting dominance through such corrections. A 2022 study analyzed this in the context of Twitter. The researchers found that the majority of corrections have no goodwill behind them and simply seek to humiliate.

In 61% of the analyzed tweets, the grammar police "used verbal bullying only to attack the face of authors of the posts." In the case of the remaining 39%, the users were correcting others constructively, "with intentions to correct grammatical errors."

It's safe to say, then, that correcting someone's grammar and spelling errors is just a way for some people to feel superior. Professor of Psychology at Stanford University, Benoît Monin, explained to Slate that correcting someone in public makes us feel good about ourselves, and that's why we do it.

"The way we evaluate our competence is relative to other people,” Monin told Slate. “If I need to feel good about my language skills, one way that I could do that would be to give myself evidence that my language skills are awesome. Another is to give myself evidence that other people's language skills [are bad]. So by putting down other people, I can feel better about myself."

The main question then is why we love putting other people down. Most cases of correction in this list are people in some way or another making fun of others. Some do it more politely; others do it much harsher. Still, for the corrector, it's often about superiority and control. Even spectators or those who read and "like" the correcting comments engage in a form of ridicule.

In 2021, Macedonian researchers found that those who like to put others down and use disparaging humor usually project their own feelings. Essentially, it's how they adapt to the world that might ridicule them. So, to avoid being the victims, they ridicule first and boost their self-esteem. The researchers theorize that they were likely bullied as children, and developed this as a defense mechanism.

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