thebibliosphere:

raivex:

thebibliosphere:

Just while we’re on the subject of spelling and grammar, I do appreciate when people point things out to me. Sometimes I do make mistakes, sometimes it’s autocorrect. Other times it’s a pun (forever the curse of a pun lover) and it goes over other people’s heads. Other times I’m writing something off the cuff and in rapid fire and I’ll miss things here and there in the quick scan I do before moving on to the next thing I need to do on here so it feels like I am not ignoring people. 

But here’s the thing, people sending me “wow you’re an editor and you type like that? lol” messages? Is a dick move for several reasons and I’ll tell you why…

First of all: I am not at work when I am on tumblr. I might as well be my second full time job at this point, but I am not in actual fact on the clock when I am here.

I am not at work when I am texting someone unless I am texting them as a client. I am not at work when I am having conversations with people online, unless they are my client. 

You can correct my grammar or my spelling if you want, but don’t make some derisive comment about me being a writer and an editor and not being able to type and make it into a thing like “wow I guess  could be an editor too if it’s that easy” just because you’re being pedantic with someone you are having an informal conversation with. 

It takes more than the ability to spell and get your grammar right 100% of the time to be an editor. It is not an easy job to be an editor. Which is why when I am not at work, my typing goes to absolute shit because I don’t have the excess energy to expend on that level of concentration when I am not working. Or sometimes just plain don’t give a shit. Like, I do not care. My typing is imperfect when I am talking rapid fire, sometimes with multiple people over multiple platforms at once. Woopdiedoo.

And when you’re mean about it? When you say? “I can’t help it, I know it doesn’t matter but it annoys me when people can’t spell”? 

You’re not only admitting that you don’t care enough to regulate behavior which you know is rude to others, you are also being ableist and quite possibly racist as well. 

Not everyone finds it easy to write, and I don’t mean that in the creative sense, I mean that in the very basic sense that some people with learning difficulties struggle to read and write. 

This does not make them less intelligent than you. It does not make them less brilliant than you. It does not mean they give any less of a shit about something important than you do, or are any less deserving of your respect and civility than some asshole who is an asshole but who knows how to use an em dash correctly.

I’ve dropped clients who had good grammar and spelling, but I just plain couldn’t deal with their attitude, and stuck with the people apologizing over and over for how much work I have to do on their manuscript because they know. They know they’re not as good as everyone else and the social stigma around it is so overwhelming it undermines everything they will ever do.

Other people may also not come from the same culture as you, speak the same languages as you, or have had access to the same opportunities you have had. If their way of communicating is understood but doesn’t conform the views of intelligence, quite frankly instilled by White Nationalism and Colonization and you tear them down for not conforming to your limited world view of propriety? They’re not the problem here, you are.

Someone’s ability to spell does not indicate their value or worth, or even the time they have put into something. I see so many rebuttals on this hellsite and on other places, where people go out of their way to invalidate the words of other people simply because they mixed up “your” and “you’re”, even though it doesn’t stop their meaning from being understood (and honestly it’s most likely auto-correct and you know it), but hey I guess it’s just way easier to tear someone down based on an arbitrary and false idea of assigned intelligence and societal worth based on their use of English grammar than it is to come up with an actual rebuttal. Boy aren’t you a hero.

So just…like…I get it, I get you see something and it’s incorrect and part of you may niggle at it and yes there are times when “perfection” is not only expected but required and spelling and grammar is important (or else I wouldn’t have the job I am very good at). But just, I dunno, quit being a dick to people because you’re a pedantic asshole who wants to feel superior. 

At the end of the day we’re all just sentient atoms hurtling towards the same unknown. The least you can do is be kind.

I 98% agree with this. Only question I have is how is it racist? I’m not trying to be rude, I’m genuinely curious because I haven’t been able to think of a way that it is racist.

@raivex to answer your question, (and I apologize for the lack of sources and if this is poorly written, I am doing this from my bed via mobile so there’s no way in heck I’m going to do this justice) there are a lot of people, online and off, who ascribe to an idea of “Proper English” and perceive it as being a hallmark of intelligence and cultural…validity? I suppose? 

To give you an example of how this works, for me growing up in Scotland, I was always in trouble for “not speaking properly”, when in actual fact I was. I was just speaking Scots, which is its own dialect and some people do argue, own language, as it uses words rooted in our origin of culture that are not found in the English language which has different roots. So, what my teachers meant when I spoke and wrote in my native Scots, was “stop being a northern peasant and speak Imperial English” because English was and still is the perceived superior language considered to be a sign of superior class and intelligence. 

But only if you speak and write in a very narrow and rigid dialect of it which is not in fact native to a huge chunk of the populace in England itself. Amazing, I know.

People who do not speak or write in “Proper English” are often “othered” by those who do so as a means to justify not only their own social class standing above others, but also their support of social constructs which are built on class prejudice and racial oppression dating back to Western Colonization of well…everywhere. 

To give you a bigger and perhaps more recognizable example of this, I see this kind of thing a lot from people who say things like “well if they want to be taken seriously, they should stop speaking ghetto and learn to talk proper” when people use phonetic spelling or grammar as a means expression. (also emojis, emojis are included in this)

Often this argument is used derisively when referring to the use of AAVE (African American Vernacular English, for those unaware) either in written or spoken form, and is an incorrect assumption that AAVE is a purely a slang form of English created due to lack of culture and intelligence. 

This is both a) incorrect and b) based on racist propaganda that is deeply ingrained in White culture from our days of sailing the high seas “discovering” “new lands” and inflicting ourselves on the locals, like a gods damned plague. Quite literally.

What AAVE—and other regional based dialects are—is in actuality, a sociolect of English. 

Which is a fancy ass way of saying a totally legitimate form of English vernacular with its own

pronunciations (varying from region to region, as all language does), unique words, and grammatical rules and constructs. And it is absolutely recognized by linguistics as being a Proper way of speaking and writing. 

And if anyone wants to argue with that then they can meet me in the fucking pit cause I did not go to school for four years for some small minded pedant to imply English, an absolute cluster fuck of a language, is the purest form of expression.

AAVE is not lesser, nor lazy— traits which are often implied by people who attribute social value to the adherence of a very select snippet of the English dialect. Which as we’ve already noted, has its roots in White Ideology and Colonization.

Which, I’d like to say gives a whole new connotation to the term “grammar nazi” but honestly, the implication was always there. 

And again, yes, of course, there is a time and place for precise grammar and spelling, of course there is. But then there’s using someone’s ability to utilize proper grammar and spelling as a means of measuring their worth as a human being and how much respect you offer them, to which my invitation to meet me in the pit still stands.

The concept of language being sacred—but only a certain type of language—and needing to be respected is rooted deeply in problematic and harmful ideation of false superiority. And some people really need to fucking chill over it.