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Comment by Kluny | Hacker News Reader

A lot of [] people in China simply [were] not [born] in hospitals 20 [years] ago.

Every family has at least two children [] where I [grew] up, even the official of the village. More like the case of speeding. You are not allowed, but you can get away with it, if the police are not there or [they] feel it is better [] to not give you a ticket.

[Even] a lot of Chinese are surprised when I talk about this with them. So be careful about the media's report. (they report what they think it is true, but might not [be]).

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We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13093053 and marked it off-topic.

This isn't Grammar News. Unsolicited public correction of someone's second-language grammar is beyond rude.

Especially when fixing the grammar doesn't change the overall message of the post. I read it without even noticing the mistakes.

Maybe tho OP will appreciate the time someone took to correct their grammar. There was no malicious inclination or abuse behind the post. The corrections didn't include something like "far out your grammar is bad, learn how to write proper English". Now that would have been rude and uncalled for.

It would have come across as less rude if it had been prefaced with something to the effect of "I found your post insightful because xyz. It appears that you're not a native English speaker. In case you might find it helpful, I've made some suggestions below to improve the grammar of your post to make it more accessible to other readers."

Especially since the poster is likely not a native English speaker.

No it's not. It looks like constructive helpful feedback to me. I, for one, appreciate people's grammar being better on HN. Granted, a private message would have been better, but HN doesn't support that.

> I, for one, appreciate people's grammar being better on HN.

If you want to accomplish that by making non-native speakers feel unwelcome, unsolicited corrections are a great idea. Otherwise not so much.

Not in my opinion. My time is limited. If any speaker, native or non, doesn't want helpful grammar feedback, I don't need to read their writing.

That's kind of what I was going for, yep. I use forums to learn foreign languages as well and I appreciate helpful feedback.

If you're aiming to be constructive, it would help if you introduced yourself and politely said what you were doing first, as Cauterized said. Just rewriting someone else's words without further comment sounds really blunt and condescending.

Sorry so many people got upset over that, I was trying to offer constructive feedback.

Sorry for being tough about it, I can see you meant well. Some people will appreciate the feedback and some people are already doing all they can to get over the fear of engaging in a second language at all. Generally it is better to ask if feedback is wanted and even then it is not an easy thing to do well.

thanks for correcting the grammar.

Cheers. You're doing very well.

Go back to reddit if you want a pat on the back from other 12 year olds for being a pedantic grammar Nazi.

Trying to be a douchebag?

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