ETA:
The Sad Life of a Grammar Nazi
For all those people who think that dyslexics and those with other learning disabilities have an unfair advantage, what with being allowed laptops in school and given extra time in exams (not that I had such advantages) please believe me that once we get into the real world, you have all the advantages.
This is an excerpt from a publisher's blog.
If we're talking actual query [letters] I don't
overlook those mistakes AT ALL. They are HUGE red flags for the project
being queried. If you make mistakes in your query [letter] you'll make mistakes
in your novel. I can't submit an error-ridden novel to an editor. Well,
I could but I flat out refuse to do so.
I encounter this sentiment so many times, not just from publishers but in my every day life (it's not always aimed at me, I hasten to add).
Did you know that Agatha Christie, arguably the best writer of the 20th century, was dyslexic? She wasn't diagnosed but they can tell from studying her manuscripts and drafts. I don't claim to be the next
Agatha Christie (I'd happy to be compared to a Mills & Boon writer)
but I cant help but wonder what sort of reception Miss Christie would receive if she was trying to get published today.
The thing is, subjects like physics and algebra have always come easily to me. Given the easy with which I view these topics, I have never felt that others are dumb just because they can't do what comes relatively easy to me.
What I would really like to know is why people for whom English has always come easy, feel the need to call others stupid and point out their mistakes to make them feel dumb, just because some people can't grasp language and it's nuances as easily as they do?
Tell me, what makes English and language so super that you get the automatic right to look down on others?
- The ability to spell never helped to invent the lightbulb.
- Grammar didn't help harness the principles of magnetism, movement and electricity, which are the basis of modern life.
- Punctuation didn't send men to the moon.
Okay, so to give language it's due, there have been some good plays and books but I honestly don't think that even Shakespeare has improved anywhere near as many lives as electricity has! What would you rather give up, books, or all electrical equipment?
By any reasonable standards, the things that I am good at have done a hell of a lot more for the world than an understanding of spelling and grammar ever has.
Despite being often being above average in areas other than language, most dyslexics have grown up being made to feel dumb for something that they could do nothing about. I can't tell you how unfair it is and how disheartening it feels to get your homework 100% correct and still get marked down 20% for poor spelling and writing, especially if like me, you had no idea why you couldn't do what all your classmates could do with ease. Do you grammar Nazi's out there have any idea how humiliating it is to spend your lunch hours being given extra English lessons while your friends are out playing and then in your school holidays, have a private English tutor because, for reasons that are completely unknown to seemingly anyone on planet earth, you are so stupid that you can't grasp what everyone repeatedly tells you are simple principles?
Do you have the slightest idea how humiliating it is as an adult to still have to ask for help with English?
When I give my manuscripts to my my editor, I cringe inside. I literally shrink with embarrassment when I see her editing them, even though she is as nice and matter of fact about my mistakes as it is possible to be.
Those old insecurities never completely leave us. I am so embarrassed to call myself a writer, I still feel like someone is just going to start laughing, because I was raised to think that my having anything to do with the English language WAS completely laughable.
So the next time you're tempted to correct your/you're, there/their/they're, rein/reign/rain etc. stop and wonder if you aren't the billionth person to point this out to them and if just maybe, there is a reason that they can't get it and that that reason has nothing to do with their intellect. Then maybe wonder if they don't have talents that would would make you look and feel inept. And if you wouldn't like your nose rubbed in your failings, perhaps you shouldn't rub other peoples noses in theirs?
Wouldn't your time be better spent by focusing on what they're trying to say rather than on what they're doing wrong?
I encountered Grammar Nazi's a lot when I worked at the BMA in my early 20's. Finally I'd had enough and told my supervisor that I would learn to spell when she could explain to me exactly what principles are proved by the worlds most famous equation, E=MC2. She never chastised me from that point on, just corrected my mistakes. Why couldn't she have done that in the first place?
