Is it rude to point out somebody's bad grammar?

Question

i see bad grammar and bad spelling everywhere but sometimes when i comment on it i feel like people consider it some sort of rudeness of me.. am i wrong to do that?

Answer 1

Unless you're the person's grammar teacher, yes it's rude.
I am a grammar teacher, and actually sometimes even then it's rude.

Here: try this on--I certainly hope you're not an English grammar teacher, since you obviously don't realize that "I" should be capitalized, you seem to think "it" can replace things other than nouns, and you have no concept of the need to avoid run-on sentences. Rude, eh?

Answer 2

Here on Yahoo! Answers, I do it all the time. So much grammar on this site is so atrocious, and I feel sorry for those who perpetrate it. Does that make me condescending? You bet it does! But I don't care - the sense of personal offense I feel when someone doesn't respect my language, or respect others enough to communicate properly, outweighs the offense someone will feel in being corrected.

Typos are one thing, but whole phrases, clauses, and sentences that make no sense are something else entirely and are worthy of correction.

Answer 3

You're not wrong. A majority of people have atrocious grammar. It is getting worse rather than better with advertising using improper grammar to get their message out to the public. I correct peoples grammar often. ( Only with people I know). How else will they know unless someone tells them?

Answer 4

I generally think it is rude. However, when you need to be extra careful about what EXACTLY is being said, when the arrangement of words chosen needs to be carefully laid out in order to avoid ambiguities or the wrong meaning, any grammatical issues that change a sentence's meaning definitely needs pointing out!

Some rules in grammar are purely annoying. I think "they" or "them" ought to be singular or plural. The usage of "they" in the singular sense is reasonable because we, the speakers of the English language, have not agreed upon any singular monosyllabic pronoun that can be a subject meaning "he or she" or an object meaning "him or her". There is nothing particularly wrong with "yous" or "y'all" if there is a need to refer directly to a group of people with whom you are holding discussion instead of only a single person. But these are examples of "bad grammar", according to the English I was taught.

Sometimes, we have to make up our own rules to effectively communicate.

Answer 5

Kind of - but it depends on how idiotic the question is that you're answering. For example, if I see something that's spelled so badly and is such an asinine question, I don't hesitate to point out to the person that their grammar bites. lol. In a nice way.;-)

Answer 6

Sometimes its good for example they have to write an essay and there's many wrong grammar. It's bad when you tell it to them when there's a lot of if people even though you didn't mean to embarrassed them they would get hurt.

Answer 7

If you are asked, then it isn't rude, sometimes, if you say it a couple times nicely it won't bother people, but when you comment on everything in their grammer, people feel that's all you concentrate on instead of the whole point. It's good to know your grammer, but keep it to your self it hurts people's feelings.

Answer 8

Having a bad grammar isn't a deal to think about ... Most people talk different way with writing, even their own writing. Oral saying doesn't need 100% correct, you could say "she don't care" but write with she doesn't care...

Answer 9

It all depends on how you're talking to. Some people get offended when they're being corrected. Most people are mostly relaxed and they're actually thankful when people correct them SOMETIMES

Answer 10

There's a time and a place for everything. If you are correcting someone having a casual conversation, you'll look like a nerd. If you are correcting someone during an important discussion, you'll look like a @$$.