I would revel in shouting “stet!”1 in response to attempts to add an apostrophe to my possessive “its” but I’ve been told that it would be inappropriate. The social etiquette of correction lacks clarity.
We all know a hyperliterate boffin who casually employs mixed metaphors and drops the dreaded “should of [+ past participle]” in group chats. Their latest Scrabble score is almost as enviable as their nonchalance, and they might have a few letters after their name. Would you enlighten them, grammatically?
Social media has blurred perceptions of when it is acceptable to point out mistakes. I surprise myself when writing that correcting someone else’s typo is worse than committing the error itself. Pedantry parade, you may prefer to stop reading now; this is probably not your safe space.
Any opportunity for lexical punctiliousness and I used to be their there quicker than anyone could shout “dangling preposition!”. However, I have realised that my innate desire to correct people’s SPaG is rarely selfless. It is perchance an exhibition of intellectual appetite with a hint of misjudged academic superiority.
Despite suspecting that I will be met with acquiescence at best, I still sometimes brazenly enunciate words in their original language with near-native pronunciation. I wince at choritso [sic] and expresso [sic], /ʧəɹˈiːtsəʊ/ and /ɪkˈspresəʊ/, respectively, and revel in showcasing my enjambment to any unsuspecting ex-colleague or random stalker-scroller on my socials. I can’t even purposely write an incorrect spelling herein for fear of someone unwittingly reusing it, thus rendering me culpable for their faux pas. I will not be part of that.
I have been known to send error-strewn messages to my friends and family because errare humanum est2. You have to pick your battles in life, and I choose to submit to autocorrect. I regard it a rare privilege to communicate freely with other humans without either party feeling judged and it is easier to facilitate this in relation to language than subject matter. How we speak and write doesn’t make us better or worse humans, just ones who speak and write differently from our purist alter egos. Moreover, explanations of comma splice rules are vitality-guzzlers; I prefer to save some energy for calling out bigotry and hatred.
Nevertheless, old habits die hard! I can’t help but find it ridiculously gratifying to spot and correct errors, and it is a challenge to refrain from doing so in most contexts. This is where ‘Stet! Dreyer’s English’ game comes in. Its light-hearted cards validate language pedantry, encouraging us all to vocalise our antipathy to misplaced apostrophes and missing prepositions – all without offending anyone! It is indeed wonderful to have friends and keep some of them, but it’s even better to have friends with whom to play nerdy word games too!
If you’re here from Instagram for an answer, I didn’t s[t]et you up! The sentence you read was incorrect. It should have read “Lavinia has invited Arabella and me”.
- stet derives from the Latin ‘stare’ and translates as ‘let it stand’. It’s used in editing to override or nullify a correction or deletion. ↩︎
- errare humanum est translates as “to err is human”. I have chosen to omit the latter part of the quote perseverare autem diabolicum for convenience! Come at me! ↩︎
