Grammar Nazis Rejoice: NYT's In-House Grammar Nazi Opens Up Weekly Critique

from the neat dept

There's a class of folks (you know who you are!) who are well known in any kind of written forum/blog/email list etc. It's the infamous "Grammar Nazi." There are nice Grammar Nazis -- and we appreciate those -- and then there are the obnoxious Grammar Nazis who like to imply that you are the stupidest person to ever touch a keyboard because you mixed up affect and effect. From my perspective, I certainly appreciate the folks who point out the grammatical errors we make (we try to fix them quickly, if it makes sense), though I often find it silly to get bogged down in some of the minutiae of certain grammar rules that for all intents and purposes are almost universally ignored.

Either way, whether you're the nice kind of Grammar Nazi (who usually emails us privately) or the obnoxious kind (who always, always, always posts their comments publicly), you'll probably appreciate that the NY Times' internal Grammar Nazi (okay, technically, the Times' deputy news editor who is also in charge of The Times' style manual, Philip B. Corbett) is now publishing that papers' "weekly critique" publicly for all to see (found via Romenesko). In it, he highlights some of the common grammatical or usage problems that he's spotted regularly in the paper, with the intent of bringing it to the writers' attention for future efforts.

Filed Under: grammar, grammar nazi, philip corbett, weekly critique
Companies: new york times