Writers: Are you a grammar/spelling freak in real life as well as in your writing?

Dax, you would laugh if you ever saw inside my head when I'm at work!

Okay, that sounded way crazier than I intended. But, I work in a place where I get emails from real estate agents all the time, and half of them can't even write a proper sentence in English. It's all I can do to not email them back a list of mistakes.

I think I hate it because it's NOT THAT HARD! I mean really, the rules are simple. We learn them in elementary school for a reason.

BQ: Word misuse, I'd say. You're = your, we're = were... etc. Again, it's not hard. Use the ''re' version if you're actually saying, 'you are or we are'. See what I mean?

I am a very bad speller so every time I write something I have to ask the people around me how to spell words. I have also gotten into some really bad habits by giving random words double letters when there should not be any. I have already done that in this paragraph but the spell check changed it for me. I think I'm good at grammar though. I actually enjoy correcting grammar. I know it's strange, but true.

Hm... My biggest pet peeve is when people are writing a like like ... pizza, popcorn, hot dogs, and hamburgers. and they don't put a comma before the and so it looks like... pizza, popcorn, hot dogs and hamburgers. I know it is technically correct according to some people, but I grew up with you have to have it there or it is wrong so..

Wow, I really must say that you guys are cracking me up here. You know what so many people say about writers? That writers are elitist, pseudo-intellectuals/philosophers, and spelling/grammar Nazis. And it is absolutely true-for the most part anyway.

To be honest with you, I could not possibly care any less how poor OTHER peoples' grammar/spelling is unless they are narcissistic and arrogant enough to claim that they're master wordsmiths (a.k.a. writers), or geniuses of some sort. I mean, who gives a rats A double S how poor/well someone spells if it's not an official document/newspaper/book/articles...

Point being..when I see misspelled signs painted on the asphalt in front of the school saying "shcool" or "handcap paking" I just laugh. I mean it's funny, don't you think? I don't roll my eyes and huff and snort and stomp my foot during a temper tantrum. My blood pressure might rise a bit but that's only because I'm clutching my stomach as I laugh. So, instead of getting so angry just laugh. Who cares? Out of all the things in life to get angry about you guys choose spelling/grammar? I know that I personally choose my battles and what I get upset over and this certainly would never be prioritized near the top of my 'to get angry about" list.

BQ: My pet peeve in terms of spelling/grammer is people getting so angry over misspellings/grammatical mistakes.

YES!

I simply hate seeing stuff spelled wrong. If it's just a few typos, I don't care. We're all going to make those at some point. However, it's when every other word is intentionally spelled wrong that I feel as though my brain will cave in on itself. I'm not exactly fluent in Computer Lingo; my eyes hurt when I have to translate that to normal English.

BQ: When punctuation isn't used correctly. You don't need a college degree to know that you need a period at the end of a sentence. It's a basic thing learned in primary school. The whole meaning of a sentence changes if one little black dot is left out.

By the way, I'm a gRammeerrrr nATzieeee. *_*

Not really. I prefer everything to have proper grammar and when I send emails or text messages, I always try to make sure I have everything spelled right. But I'm not crazy about making sure everyone else has perfect grammar. If I see bad grammar it might bother me a little depending on how horrible it is, but I refrain from correcting other peoples' grammar unless they ask. I sort of find it a little rude. I try not to assume everyone has had grammar just because they make a mistake. I can't really stand it if people correct my grammar mistakes without me asking them so I try not to be hypocritical. When it comes to writing or something official however, then I find it matters more.

And yes, I know for sure it's because I write. If I didn't write, honestly I probably wouldn't even notice.

BQ: What's your biggest pet peeve for grammar or spelling?

Well this isn't specific but it annoys me usually when someone wants something critiqued but they ask you not to critique grammar because it "isn't important." Or when someone claims to have excellent grammar but can hardly string a sentence of words together.

Yes, but I tend to keep quite about it. I have only so much mental energy to expend on things I care about. Most of the people I work with have quite good spelling and grammar. I point out mistakes only in official documents - anything that might be seen by a customer or a senior manager.

I think my fussiness is partly because I'm a writer, and I know that if I submit work for publication that's full of spelling and grammatical mistakes, it'll be rejected immediately. It's also partly because I program computers for a living, and if I make a mistake in a program, the program either doesn't run or doesn't do what it's supposed to. The cost of fixing a mistake while I'm writing the program is a few dollars (the time it takes me to notice it's wrong and fix it). The cost of fixing a mistake that gets out to the customer can be tens of thousands of dollars (the time of all the people who have to figure out what's wrong and argue that it's worth fixing and fix it and prove it's been fixed). So it pays to get it right first time.

If you're not fussy about spelling and grammar outside your writing, I don't think you're entitled to call yourself a writer. Spelling and grammar are the tools of your trade, and their correct use ought to come naturally to you. If you don't use correct spelling and grammar all the time (except when you do it deliberately badly for a stupid or uneducated character), then it's probably because it doesn't yet come naturally to you. That means that when you write your stories, you're spending time and effort thinking about whether to write "your" or "you're", when you should be thinking about higher-level things, like "What is my character going to say at this point?"

BQ: I despise all signs that a writer is lazy and/or incompetent, but my favourite would probably be the misuse of the apostrophe. It's really not that hard, people - and if you think it is, either figure it out or stop writing. Thank you.

EDIT: Oh God yes, how could I forget the people who post whatever random crap comes into their heads and say "what do u think of this btw dont say da gramer is bad this is just a rough draft lol?" I would quite cheerfully strangle them, or at least take whatever steps were necessary to prevent them from breeding... If you know there are mistakes in something you've written, then for the love of all you hold sacred, fix them before you ask someone for their opinion of it. Your main reason for showing your work to someone else for the first time should be to find the mistakes that you *don't* know are there.

Surprisingly, no. I'll try my best to be grammatically correct while I'm speaking. However, if I fail or use the wrong words, I don't freak out and bang my head against the wall in disgust. I don't have time to watch what I say. I'm different when I'm writing though. I need to have everything spelled perfectly and the grammar must be flawless. That's writing. I must have that in writing. Sometimes, when I read or write too much, I simply forget how to spell words. That irks me!

To be honest, spelling bothers me more than grammar.

BQ: When they use the wrong form of your or you're. It's you're welcome. Not your welcome.

Yes, I am a grammar freak. (Example: If I type something wrong in facebook chat. I will retype it with correct grammar, spelling or punctuation.) My biggest pet peeve for grammar would be when I don't put a ' in don't. I do that a lot.

I am too. My boss used to make me check every email he sent and he named me email answerer. The funny thing is he also laughed at me because I always wrote them too formal (I'm French and we are a lot more formal in writing than English speakers, particularly than Irish ones) and used words that seemed like they came from forgotten pages of the dictionary. One example I have in mind was when one of the movie times was published wrong in the newspaper, I wrote up a sign to put up on the door saying "please be aware that a printing error blablabla" and I titled it "Erratum" which to me was a perfectly common word to use to refer to the correction of a printing error. They all had a great laugh with that at work.

I hate stuff spelt wrong. I don't mind typos and I'm tolerant because I know sometimes you can sort of drift off as you write and end up typing something silly even though you know it's wrong (and will usually notice on the second read). Recently for example I had a great laugh re-reading myself because I wrote "pretty clothes" instead of "pretty close". That was a good one. What I truly hate now is text speech. To me, that's not just dumb, it's dangerous. I consider text speak to the the Newspeak of our generation and it freaks me out.

BQ: these days I have noticed people saying "I could care less", which makes me think "I'm sure you could" every time. It's meant to be "I couldn't care less". Aside from that the usual there/their/they're, is/his, your/you're and yeah "would of" too. Other pet peeve, which rarely happens here where I'm surrounded by educated people, but happens on every other American forum I've been to is "it's "spelled" not "spelt", dumb*ss". Bothers me even more when the forum's own spell checker does it since I have no way of setting it to British English.

EDIT: Strangely enough - and though I don't know why - I actually like "ain't" in certain contexts. Where does that word even come from I wonder?

I suppose you could say that.

I don't think it's because I write in my spare time, though. I kind of /have/ to be a grammar Nazi, considering I'm majoring in English and language education. That's not to say that I don't make mistakes, though. In fact, I make them all the time.

BQ: I don't think I have any specific peeves; I just hate stupidity in general. Maybe when people use "ain't" on purpose, haha.