90+% of the time you get common mistakes. Should ofs, they’re - there - their confusions, apostrophes for plurals.

The kind of thing that confuses ESL speakers. The decent thing would seem to be to try and stick to the way it’s taught rather than go with the “it doesn’t matter” route when it absolutely matters to some.

But let’s get down to the issue. You are right, correction of English is used as an insult a lot of the time. Sometimes correction of code is also used as an insult. When correcting someone is used out of line and abused, it’s always a bad thing. Correcting someone should never be used to insult.

I like this. I don’t think that’s the intention for a lot of pedants, but rather they hold a belief in prescripitivism, and have taken it upon themselves to enforce the rules as they imagine them, for one reason or another. That being said, it’s still telling someone they’re wrong without any possibility of improving present or future discussions, and that’s why it’s annoying.

So, I corrected you earlier but this is to create a conversation. This is something I’ve been noticing a lot in social media overall: corrections seem to create conversation where if you agree with someone it’s not typically a conversation. “Yeah, you are right…” isn’t a path to an interesting exchange of ideas.

It’s true, and I think there’s some people that like that approach more than others. I wonder if that contributes to the high number of lurkers on every platform. The main other kind of space centers around venting about a common complaint as the main form of discourse, and those always end up being a little unhinged after a while.

Asking questions and digging into why. I’ve seen this happen a few times and it feels like it’s taken more as an insult. A lot of people get defensive if you ask “Why is this something you think.” We’ve created an internet culture of correction, where correction makes conversation. I wonder if this stems from people on the internet correcting people as an insult.

You know, I’ve never thought about it that way, but you’re right. Every once an a while I see someone take a truly odd position on something, and I end up just asking questions because it’s new and interesting and I don’t really have a bottled comeback. It seems like that actually makes them more defensive than if I had just called them an asshole.

Anyways, thank you for reading this random tangent :D

You’re welcome, it was a good one!

Edit: Oh yeah, and on C, I was expecting someone to mention it. It’s an outlier in being way more static than pretty much every other programming language, but it’s still faster changing than the average natural language. Maybe casual Hebrew has changed more since the 60’s, I guess.