I’m glad it got banned, frankly. Those sorts of bots on Reddit are extremely spammy and annoying.
Being a “grammar nazi” used to be a thing on Reddit and I’m glad it died out.
Being a “grammar nazi” used to be a thing on Reddit and I’m glad it died out.
(No, I don't go around correcting strangers' grammar, but only because I know that most people are a lot more insecure about learning that they're wrong about something.)
Another critique might simply be that while it is certainly useful to understand rules of grammar, it isn't worth derailing a conversation over.
Sure, but this is sort of begging the question. Bad grammar can subtly affect the effectiveness of communication in ways that sometimes aren't even explicitly clear to the participants. Grammatical rules don't exist (solely) because someone decided to be stuck up for no reason.
> Another critique might simply be that while it is certainly useful to understand rules of grammar, it isn't worth derailing a conversation over.
Sure, this roughly describes why I don't correct strangers in practice. But note that the "derailment" is just another side effect of the insecurity I describe, not an inherent quality of correcting grammar: when someone corrects my grammar, spelling, or diction, my reaction is "Thanks! <rest of comment back on topic>". I don't see how this is derailing at all.
The type of grammar that gets corrected is usually not bad to the point of causing misunderstandings. Simple things like "could care less", "would of", etc. Every once in a while there's a mistake that's so bad that it makes things ambiguous, but that's not common. And it's not what these annoying bots are replying to in any case.
> I don't see how this is derailing at all
These bots can devolve into linguistics discussion, etc, that's not related to the linked article or self text at all. And in reddit's case, there are "meta" bots that respond if people respond "bad bot" or "good bot" to a bot's response.
> Grammatical rules don't exist (solely) because someone decided to be stuck up for no reason
Grammatical guides existing does not mean advice is always welcome. I say guides because a lot of supposed rules are prescriptive opinions, and there's no arbitrator that can deem a rule to be "correct". English does not have a language council, unlike French or Korean.
I meant simply that changing the topic is a mild "derailment" so to speak simply by redirecting the attention of the readers away from the topic at hand.
You could block them.
> Being a “grammar nazi” used to be a thing on Reddit and I’m glad it died out.
It's a shame it died out. Just like lots of things on reddit. The good/fun/interesting things are gone, only stale propaganda and silly nonsense is left.
It's funny how some people think that something shouldn't exist because they personally don't like it. The entitlement and privilege.
> The good/fun/interesting things are gone, only stale propaganda and silly nonsense is left.
Did you mean, “are left”?
True. But I'm a rebel.
> Did you mean, “are left”?
Yes. Thank you for pointing that out. We need more of you helpful grammar nazis in this world.
As are the people you’re trying to correct.
Being a grammar nazi isn't good, fun, or interesting. It derails conversations, encourages know-it-alls, and the corrections are often not correct. /r/badlinguistics exists for a reason.
Giving native speakers unsolicited advice is annoying, even if one is correct.
> only stale propaganda and silly nonsense is left.
There are a lot of niche subreddits with great content. Filtering by keywords and a few power users makes for a better experience.
> You could block them.
I hate this argument. The fact that reddit has an API does not mean we should tolerate junk replies from bots. Blocking a bot only blocks it for me; that bot is still polluting discussions.
This wasn't Twitter arbitrarily banning you, but people repeatedly reporting your tweets. The option is right there, and aptly called "Uses the reply function to spam".
"I could not care less" is a malapropism we should strive to avoid.
And since it's nit-picking, it's worth noting that the "could/couldn't care less" thing isn't at all as clear-cut as you are making out.
In the early 1990s, the well-known Harvard professor and language writer Stephen Pinker argued that the way most people say “could care less”—the way they emphasize the words—implies they are being ironic or sarcastic along the lines of the Yiddish phrases like “I should be so lucky!” which typically means the speaker doesn’t really expect to be so lucky. Michael Quinion of the wonderful World Wide Words website makes the same argument.
and
Both Merriam-Webster and dictionary.com have weighed in and say “could care less” and “couldn’t care less” mean the same thing. Their reasoning is that both phrases are informal, English is often illogical, and people use the two phrases in the same way. “Could care less” has come to mean the same thing as “couldn’t care less.”
https://www.quickanddirtytips.com/education/grammar/could-ca...
http://itre.cis.upenn.edu/%7Emyl/languagelog/archives/001182...
http://itre.cis.upenn.edu/~myl/languagelog/archives/001201.h...
> The reply and mention functions are intended to make communication between Twitter users easier. Automating these actions to reach many users on an unsolicited basis is an abuse of the feature, and is not permitted. For example, sending automated replies to Tweets based on keyword searches alone is not permitted.
https://help.twitter.com/en/rules-and-policies/twitter-autom...