Being A Grammar Snob Is 'Definately' (Or Was That 'Literally'?) Damaging Your Social Life

Are you a self-proclaimed "Grammar Nazi"? I can tell you one thing for sure. You'll never say you could care less about common uses (or abuses) of grammer while sipping on your expresso, irregardless of whether you could definately hurt someone's feelings by pointing they're nasty errors out. For all intensive purposes, your always their to fix the supposably great writing of you're Facebook friends, or at least to rant and rave about it elsewhere on the web.

OK, OK — I'll stop now, I promise!

Are you wondering what on Earth happened to the English language in the age of web publishing, worried that it won't be long before once reputable newspapers begin featuring the same kind of errors — or stewing in the knowledge that you've indeed already spotted them there?

I'll share a few secrets. Having been a sub-editor before the internet became such an integral part of people's lives, my mind begins editing any writing it encounters automatically. And also, I just started a sentence with a conjunction. And again! (Oops, that was an actual fragment.) And also, I occasionally encounter completely embarrassing typos in my own older articles, proving that the mind so often sees what it thinks it wrote rather than what it actually did write, especially when you read your own sucky writing shortly after producing it.

Here's a thought: nobody's writing (even Mark Twain's — who freely employed the "literally" people seem to get so hung up about today as an intensifier) is free of the kind of errors you routinely judge.

Who Are The Notorious 'Grammar Nazis'?

Just who are the people who judge others negatively on their use of language? A research team that later published its findings in the journal PLOS One was eager to find out, and recruited 83 native English speakers from the US, who were invited to figure out what they thought of potential house mates based on adverts they wrote. Some of the ads contained "typos" and "grammos" galore, while others were free of spelling and grammar errors. After the exercise was complete, the participants were more closely investigated themselves.

The study, aptly titled "If You're House Is Still Available Send Me an Email", did figure out some things, however.

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Grammar and spelling freaks are more likely to be introverts.

Those who take issue with spelling mistakes tend to be more conscientious and less open, while those who judged potential room mates negatively on grammar mistakes are more likely to be disagreeable people.

Study author Robin Queen said: "My guess is that introverts have more sensitivity to variability." In other words, those who require solitude to "recharge their batteries" might simply be less tolerant of others who are different to them. While Queen is a linguist and not a personality expert, she seems to be onto something here.