OCD on Grammar and Spelling

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I can get really OCD on grammar and spelling. Whenever I see typos or common grammar mistakes, I can get rather frustrated on the inside, especially when not correcting them.

I do correct people on their grammar all the time during conversations. This is often not appreciated, probably because it might seem rather interruptive. In online chats I often end up linking images like this one (link), hoping people will look at that and stop making the common mistakes that annoy me so much.

I wonder what to do to make myself more tolerant towards things like this ...

Same.

I do that too. I always want to correct grammar in posts. Misspelling simple words gets on my nerves, although I do misspell things from time to time. One of the most embarrassing instances of that was years ago when I ripped on a poster in an email group who constantly used incorrect grammar. I had gotten tired of it after months of seeing it. Now, I don't alway use correct grammar in my posts, because sometimes I'm going for more of a casual tone. I certainly don't speak with correct grammar at all, unless I need to for some reason. However, when I ripped into that one poster, I mentioned the grammar problems several times. I was sure that I got my point across. Then it was pointed out that I spelled it "grammer" in the entire post.

My bad.

I actually fear those situations. When people correct me on grammar and spelling it feels rather embarrassing indeed.

How do you feel about regional differences in grammatic usage? I could give you so many examples of normal, every day conversation that is so full of errors that your head would explode. Also, some sentences take on an entirely different meaning depending on which word you put the emphasis on. We use a lot of double negatives, we drop letters and whole syllables, we combine two words to make one (inkpen, pokeypin, hosepipe, etc) and we construct sentences incorrectly "Where you at?" or "Where you live at?". We explain distances by time. It's about ten minutes away. It's about an hour away. "Go about five minutes up the road and take a left" We understand this on some sort of basic level, and we can find places by using that. Without being given the speed to drive, because it's assumed. And it's not always the speed limit.

Also macaroni and cheese is a vegetable here.

So, what's your opinion of the regional vernaculars?

I'm another grammar pedant. I don't mind it so much in the spoken word, but in the written word, I hate it. But, I don't correct anyone, unless they ask me to.

One that really gets me is 'must of', instead of 'must have'. Now, I can understand how someone can say it wrongly, because if you miss out the 'h', which is a common way of speaking, they do sound alike. But, how can anyone write it wrongly?

Lynn Truss's (How many would leave out the last 's' there?) book, 'Eats, Shoots and Leaves' is one of my favourite reads.

I'm a nitpicker when it comes to my own language use. Several people have yelled at me for nitpicking their language use, so I'm inclined to keep it to myself anymore. I really, really want to correct bad grammar and incorrect language use when I see it, though.

When speaking with someone I always notice the large amounts of 'shortcuts' being taken. I don't actually mind as much when they skip a verb, unless skipping it makes the whole sentence confusing. If someone uses a double negative, I always correct them because I generally find these very confusing as well.

Combined words are perfectly fine as long as I understand them and they're not redundant.

People explaining distances by time is not very annoying. It's more common that people (or people here at least) seem to explain distance more as the actual distance, or number of streets in between (similar to using people using 'blocks' in the US).

I've seen that one a lot, and the few people I asked actually seemed to think it's the correct way to do it. "Must've" when spoken sounds very similar to "must of", and with many people using it, I guess it can get accepted by some people.

I think the Internet in general makes people lazy in their grammar and spelling habits, but that's just my theory

I used to correct words [either typos or ones like in the link you provided] but then, as you say, people do not appreciate it so I stopped for the most part.

On the link, when it is saying not to type "alot", it says that you do not write "alittle" but I have definitely seen people using that. Also "abit".

That's not OCD.

It can be frustrating. Some members here have problems with dyslexia, have English as a second language or just generally have problems writing. So I urge people not to become grammar Nazis. However, I must admit that some spelling errors really grate; they are almost painful for me to read somehow. Sometimes the temptation to use my moderator powers to correct member's spelling mistakes in the subject line is overwhelming and I can't resist correcting them.

Must... resist...

It's probably not OCD, but people sometimes label you obsessive when doing that. Maybe is related to OCPD, but I should read more about their diferences.

I feel the need to correct people and to answer the questions whose answer I think I know, sometimes I have joined strangers's conversations. I feel wrong if I don't do it, but I try to stop myself. I wonder if all people feel this need, the problem is that they think I want to show them my superiority or make them look like fools when correcting them. I learned programming with a teacher's website, I admired him because I was so grateful about being able to learn by just reading his blog, so once I entered his class, he noticed I wasn't from there, the problem was that the night before that day I read a program he had written that didn't worked properly and I found the error. I wanted to tell it to him so he can fix it, a friend encouraged me to follow the teacher after the class, I did, but I sounded really bad when I talked to him, I think he thinks I just went to his class to show him that he was wrong, now I feel ashamed when I see him. Something that makes me angry is that after I talked with the teacher my friend said "It wasn't actually a good idea", then why did he encouraged me to do it? That happened two years ago, I wonder if the teacher still remembers it, sometimes I want to apologize or explain myself but maybe it's weird to do it after all this time.


I would like my grammar being corrected so I can learn to write properly.

I wouldn't call it OCD unless you really correct every little grammatical error. Grammar changes over time too. For example, most people won't correct a split infinitive any more. The ones that drive me crazy are "a vs an", "there vs they're vs their", "affect vs. effect", and "to vs too". But using "since" instead of "because" or "while" instead of "though" doesn't bother me. Neither does starting a sentence with a conjunction or ending a sentence with a preposition. There's actually an interesting video on grammar, how it changes, and how some people are way too uptight about it. I just wish I could find it.