People who constantly point out grammar mistakes are pretty much jerks, scientists find

sciencealert.com ^ | March 31, 2016 | FIONA MACDONALD

[Morgana]

Scientists have found that people who constantly get bothered by grammatical errors online have "less agreeable" personalities than those who just let them slide.

And those friends who are super-sensitive to typos on your Facebook page? Psychological testing reveals they're generally less open, and are also more likely to be judging you for your mistakes than everyone else. In other words, they're exactly who you thought they were. That sounds pretty obvious, but this is actually the first time researchers have been able to show that a person's personality traits can actually determine how they respond to typos and grammatical errors, and it could teach us a lot about how people communicate (or miscommunicate) online.

"This is the first study to show that the personality traits of listeners/readers have an effect on the interpretation of language," said lead researcher Julie Boland from the University of Michigan. "In this experiment, we examined the social judgments that readers made about the writers."

The researchers took 83 participants and asked them all to read email responses to an ad for a housemate, which either contained no errors or had been altered to include typos (e.g. "teh" instead of "the") or grammatical mix-ups, such as too/to or it's/its.

[Opinionated Blowhard]

I must be a complete a___le then because when I see work emails in lower case, with abbreviations and without proper punctuation and grammar, I go ballistic.

[al baby]

And lets not bring up the cement concrete issue

[ThomasThomas]

I approve of not capitalizing hitler. he dosen’t deserve proper grammar. Or spellings!

[William Tell]

I want the USA back said: "I give the authors a 100."

I was going to deduct points for using "extravert" instead of "extrovert", not realizing that it is an alternate spelling.

I do deduct a point for using both "mix up" and "mix-up".

[Yaelle]

Scientists find??????

I was a professional proofreader so they jump out at me but I keep it quiet for the most part.

Oh, and I freep so fast I don’t proofread my own stuff so my posts are full of errors. But, yes, as an ex English major, Strunk and White was in my baby bottle.

[al baby]

AMBIGUOUS GENITALIA is one of my favorite sayings

[Vigilanteman]

It is no longer a proper noun. It is an insult. You don’t have to capitalize moron or imbecile, do you?

[Albion Wilde]

A person enforcing the “rules” today is simply revealing their own ignorance.

The subject and possessive pronoun* do not agree.

*Unless the person is gender fluid, transgendered, agendered or genderqueer with a preference for plural pronouns, id est.

[Buttons12]

I live in PA so I’ve gotten used to split infinitives, but when someone abridges it — for example, “needs fixed” instead of “needs to be fixed” — my soul is afflicted.

Only worse thing is when someone pronounces the indefinite article “a” as a long vowel.

I earned my first dollar as a proofreader at age 12, so maybe I can’t help it and needs pitied not censured.

[forgotten man]

Here are two more for your list.

13) Very unique, more unique (unique means one and only)

14) “If I was” instead of “If I were”

[fella]

Boy, . . . has this thread drawn out the anal retentives not to mention their natural enemies the snarks.

[Yaelle]

“As well” is English from England. I like it.

[Not gonna take it anymore]

lol

Or should that be capitalized?

[No_More_Harkin]

From your screen name, I figured you celebrated that fact. :)

[E. Pluribus Unum]

That’s more better!

[Vigilanteman]

Do yinz realize that it is only in PA that we refer to our glorious commonwealth as Pee-Aye? Everywhere else, PA mean public address, Palestinian Authority or something else entirely different from Penn's Woods.

We need to Redd Up the way we talk to outsiders!

[pax_et_bonum]

I was kidding with al and sometimes I do capitalize Moron or Imbecile.

[No_More_Harkin]

In regards to number 3:
And speaking of commas, slow down when you’re writing and read your copy out loud.

Lawyer Ad:
Will work on contingency.
No money down.

Should’ve read:
Will work on contingency?
No, money down!

[Albion Wilde]

“get bothered by grammatical errors online have “less agreeable” personalities “

There’s no need to put ‘less agreeable’ in quotations.

The quotation marks there are to indicate that "less agreeable" is a quote from the language used in the article to define this type of personality.

The topmost sentence above is punctuated incorrectly, however; when a quotation is within another quotation, the single quote mark is used for the innermost quotation:

"get bothered by grammatical errors online have 'less agreeable' personalities"

[ThomasThomas]

I thought Steve martin was the Jerk.