How much do you care about grammar?

**Kaynil** · October 30, 2025 at 7:03 AM Official Post

I was just thinking about grammar and how much of a big deal or a small deal it can be to different people.

When I was younger I was always trying to have good grammar because I was afraid people would know it wasn't my first language if it was bad.
But I also remember feeling annoyed at certain mistakes. However nowadays I don't care as much. I still care about proper capitalization and punctuation and I will try to get it right, but it is not a biggie if someone skips a comma or misspell one word that is easy to guess what they mean. Part of that is because I feel like nowadays I feel like I am more prone to accidentally misspell words or swap the order. For example, instead of cliff-hanger I will accidentally say Hanger-cliffs, very matter-of-fact by the way, I rarely catch myself. And it is not because English is my 2nd language I do that while speaking in Spanish too.

Anyway, how about you? Do you have different standards depending the medium or who it is addressed to?
Has the amount of care for grammar changed with the years?

Lace Sabatons · November 3, 2025 at 7:05 PM Official Post

The only real standard I care about is to be effectively understood. Grammar plays a flexible role in that. sometimes when im messaging with younger friends or being very casual i dont use caps or punctuation

if im bein a silly silly jokester or just super casual i might talk 2 u w ver abbrev language

My most natural writing style is what I tend to use here most often. I tend to over use commas and exclamation points, like a lot of people do. Also sometimes I unconsciously capitalize words when I have to think about how to spell them.

Regrettably I've never been good at matching my word choice to the situation, so even when I do modulate my grammar I tend to talk like a dweeb.

Actual hoity toity 'proper' English grammar is a chaotic mess that mostly isn't even real English grammar. English is an evolving language, changes happen all the time. Some people like to pretend they don't, but that's just so they can use grammar as a pedantic cudgel.

I think I care a lot more about grammar now than I used to, primarily because of the realization that it was just as flexible as every other part of the language.

Shortie · November 6, 2025 at 11:43 AM

I tend to be a little strict when it comes to grammar, but I wouldn't say that I pull out every detail of a sentence that is wrong and either change it or mention it. Usually, for things such as a spelling being wron,g such as there, their, and they're being used wrong, that is sometimes when I speak up