grammar police?

April 10, 2008 6:28 AM

Do you correct colleagues when they make grammatical mistakes? What is the proper etiquette?

I belong to a listserve to which several lawyers around the state belong. We use it to keep each other apprised of developments, answer questions, and help solve problems related to our particular field of the law. Recently one poster, a fellow lawyer, used the term "Pyrrhic victory" to mean a hollow victory, as opposed to a costly victory. I know that pointing out the error (which is a common one, I believe) makes me seem like a flaming asshole, even if done gently. But, on the other hand, if I were misusing a phrase in this way, I would want someone to point it out to me before I used it in a brief or in a more formal setting. What would you do?

posted by pasici to Society & Culture (21 answers total)

Even in an editorial department full of copyeditors and proofreaders, pointing out stuff someone says makes you look like a jackass. However, anything someone writes is fair game.

Listservs are between the worlds. Can you reply to the poster directly without posting to the whole list? If so, I think gently explaining it is OK. If you're going to have to write to the whole listserv, take a deep breath and learn to ignore it.
posted by fiercecupcake at 6:32 AM on April 10, 2008

Normally when this happens, I try to use the word or phrase in my reply and spell it in the correct way. No need to explicitly point out the mistake.
posted by catburger at 6:36 AM on April 10, 2008

To answer the first general question: No, with one exception. The one exception is if they are likely to repeat the same error in front of someone more important than you - the person will love you for that. Every other time, you're on their shit list.
posted by meech at 6:37 AM on April 10, 2008

Doesn't it mean both though? It's hollow precisely because it was so costly?
posted by zeoslap at 6:39 AM on April 10, 2008

But that wasn't a grammar mistake, it was a malapropism!
posted by dance at 6:40 AM on April 10, 2008

Nah, not a malapropism, then, but a misunderstanding of what the phrase means, perhaps.
posted by dance at 6:41 AM on April 10, 2008

Just answered my own question... "Hollow victories are real victories, but, being empty, they don't feel like it."

Based on my own research yes you should correct him :)
posted by zeoslap at 6:43 AM on April 10, 2008

It's fine to correct people, make a joke out of it. Just don't let them feel like the joke is at their expense.
posted by munchbunch at 6:44 AM on April 10, 2008

I never have liked this equation: If I did X I would want someone to point it out to me, so I will point it out to everyone else when they do X. Your desire for grammatical correctness is ok within work settings, but don't, please don't, correct me in an informal web setting. It will just piss me off.
posted by Xurando at 6:53 AM on April 10, 2008

Listservs are between the worlds. Can you reply to the poster directly without posting to the whole list? If so, I think gently explaining it is OK. If you're going to have to write to the whole listserv, take a deep breath and learn to ignore it.

Yup. And (as has been pointed out) this is not a "grammar mistake," which is why it might be worth pointing out at all. Most of what people think are grammar mistakes are perfectly good English.
posted by languagehat at 6:58 AM on April 10, 2008

If you can do it with humor, and off-list, then try for that. I recently did this in an online exchange:

Poster: No one ever says [redacted grammatically incorrect phrase].

Me: It's true. They say [redacted correction of grammatically incorrect phrase].

/pet peeve (sorry - I have to feed the pet peeves occasionally, or they get cranky and bitey)

YMMV. A little self-deprecating humor can soften the blow.

I'm an editor at work, so I have an advantage in that people expect me to correct their grammar, although I pretty much never do unless asked, and I don't correct people's emails that they send me. Unless it's really, really egregious, and then I try for the funny-and-gentle correction.
posted by rtha at 7:01 AM on April 10, 2008

Snarking someone's usage on a listserv is lame. Sending them a personal, off-list note is still lame, but at least it's privately lame.
posted by jacquilynne at 7:08 AM on April 10, 2008

One approach I've used successfully in conversation and in written conversation like IM or here on MeFi is to ask about the phrase, its meaning, its origins, whatever. So you could say, publicly or privately, "What is a 'Pyrrhic victory'?" On MeFi, in AskMe, someone will likely be helpful and tell you; elsewhere, you might get snarkier JFGI-style comments. Still, the questioning approach works better than the Pronouncement of Authority, in my experience, anyway.
posted by cgc373 at 7:33 AM on April 10, 2008

Private response, telling him how you made that mistake once, even if you didn't.

Correcting grammar or info content is usually aggressive, or at the least, taken to be so by most recipients.

Generally, in my experience, the admonition to 'praise in public and criticize in private' applies, but it need to be undertaken with a good and honest assessment of your motivations. If you're really doing it to be helpful, great. If for self-inflation, not so great. In the case of the latter, I'd skip it and praise my wisdom in doing so.
posted by FauxScot at 7:55 AM on April 10, 2008

Listserv corrections usually go badly. For one thing, many/most people simply do not care; making the correction comes across as irrelevant wankery.

Which, in fact, it is.

Posts on a listserv should only rarely be confused with legal opinions & formal manuscripts.
posted by aramaic at 8:07 AM on April 10, 2008

I am an unmitigated asshole when it comes to things that have my name on them. Everything else I try very hard to ignore.
posted by Skorgu at 8:27 AM on April 10, 2008 [1 favorite]

What you think of as your need to champion the cause of correct English usage or as your desire to save someone from future gaffes is, in actuality, your desire to be right and have someone else be wrong.

Unless someone, quite literally, stands to lose life, livelihood or limb, let it go. Even the most gracious person will hate you a little bit, because no matter how you put it you are in effect saying "And, oh, by the way, I'm a little bit smarter than you."

Just allow. Allow yourself to think of someone else before yourself, and allow the offender to think they said something smart. Everybody wins.
posted by Darth Fedor at 9:13 AM on April 10, 2008 [1 favorite]

I'll agree with many of the above. When you juggle a few dozen email messages over the course of a day, often as a substitute for phone conversations, the email message that should get more than a single round of proofreading is very rare.

Either let it pass, or send a private message. And certainly don't clutter the list, because it is probable that no one else cares to read a potential debate over idioms.
posted by KirkJobSluder at 9:45 AM on April 10, 2008

Note that lawyers are probably doubly attuned to the "therefore I'm smarter so I win" thing -- doubly sensitive, doubly likely to react badly. A majority might still take it well, but there is a subset that was attracted to the profession because they are intellectually competitive or aggressive.

So if you do send a private email, you might couch your criticism in "you are the alpha dog" signals, like "But who am I to question your syntax? You just beat MegaCorp LLC!" Or rtha's self-deprecating approach would work, too.

P.S. I've hidden three small grammatical errors in this comment.
Unintentionally.
posted by salvia at 9:45 AM on April 10, 2008

I'm a bit neurotic when it comes to proper choices for words. The other half-dozen people at work are certainly aware of it. Luckily, they're the same way, or at least intellectually curious enough to allow us to get into a conversation about 'what word should I have used here?'

In short - I vote against bothering with it unless you know the person's temperament, or they know yours. Especially in this case: a Pyrrhic victory is a subset of Hollow victory (Proof: imagine a Pyrrhic victory that didn't feel hollow)
posted by Lemurrhea at 10:42 AM on April 10, 2008

According to Merriam-Webster:

pyhrric has this as the second entry:
costly to the point of negating or outweighing expected benefits ;

hollow has this as its third entry:
lacking in real value, sincerity, or substance : false, meaningless .

Now, it seems to me that both definitions could be easily, and appropriately, glossed as describing a victory that is not worthwhile just because the victory had none of its expected value. That is, it seems reasonable that someone might use either "pyrrhic" or "hollow" to convey the point that the victory was worthless.

Yes you could insist that the pyrrhic victory had its value negated, while the hollow victory had no inherent value to begin with, and thus the phrases do convey different meanings, strictly speaking. But, this level of pedantry is just counterproductive. It is unlikely that anyone would react well to being corrected on a point that is to them likely insignificant. (The only exception that readily comes to mind is the case of someone asking you to proofread something they've written for a very important audience. In that scenario extreme pedantry is likely welcome.)

I would just let it go unless you have very good reason to believe that this particular lawyer welcomes this sort of criticism.
posted by oddman at 11:37 AM on April 10, 2008