The Old Dog Gets: A Visit From The Grammar Nazi!

in #blogging7 years ago (edited)

Yes I really did have a visit from the Grammar Nazi! Don't worry, I'm OK and after the initial shock I do believe that I've benefited!




What is This Really All About?

The Grammar Nazi is a fairly new account here on the Steem blockchain @grammarnazi. If you check the profile it explains its purpose in these words:


"I am a bot destined to educate the masses and fight illiteracy!"


While I don't consider myself illiterate we can all use a little help at times. I have to admit that at first I was a little bit put off when the comment below showed up on my page. After all, I had spent a lot of time preparing the article and there was no hint of appreciation. The comment got straight to the point!



The general rule is i before e except after c! @grammarnazi was right! I should have remembered that from grammar school. Once I went to @grammarnazi's page and realized that it was a bot I decided to give the bot a little upvote for its service! I mean, the bot was only trying to help right?


How Are Steemers Reacting to The Grammar Nazi?

 

Perhaps it's too early to tell but in the past 24 hours it has commented well over 60 times pointing out errors on many Steemers pages. With all of those comments just a few have been given an upvote as a sign of appreciation. There was also a flag, some downvotes and a few hurt feelings!


These humble Steemers showed humility and appreciation:

Way to go @carface  and @cryptocoinews you know how to take constructive criticism and that's a skill! You're better people for it!


A Study in Psychology!


Check out what happened here. The person receiving the correction (@rinkuzblog) advice expressed appreciation and corrected the point but his expression of thanks was downvoted by @mack-bot

One user  has really been put off by the corrections and has gone on to leave messages of disdain for @grammarnazi on other Steemers blogs!


As I wrote above that was my first reaction as well but our first reaction is often not the best one!


How Will You Feel if You're Visited by @grammarnazi?


  • Will the bot hurt your feelings?
  • Will it annoy you?
  • Will you resent or appreciate the correction?
  • Will you upvote the bot's comment?
  • Will you flag the bot?


I'd really like to hear your opinion on this new bot and I hope that I've not written anything in this article to trigger it again! On second thought before leaving let's have some fun. I want to see if @grammernazi will recieve this message! Ya I know I spelled receive wrong but if it shows up to correct me I'll upvote it!


I hope that you enjoyed this article about my visit from the Grammar Nazi!


Until next time,  

 
@kus-knee (The Old Dog)


Sort:  

I myself always appreciate a little constructive criticism - but I very much fear the reaction @twiceuponatime might have.

It takes a certain level of maturity and self awareness to accept constructive criticism. Would not @twiceuponatime possess double your level of those admiral qualities which you've already demonstrated exist in you at a high level? If so relax and fear not!

he is the arrogant and sanctimonious side of myself. Sometimes I give up hope that he will ever see the light.

I see. So would I be correct in categorising @onceuponatime as the super-ego and @twiceuponatime as id? If this is the case who is ego?

I get a visit from Grammar Nazi tooo, but it was funny because I reply that I was happy to have just one mistake on my post (even if there was another mistakes that Grammar Nazi didn't see ^_^). It was not a problem for me, sure, at first because my mother language is not English and after, because my husband is an Italian Grammar Nazi at home :P

I admire you and I'm sure that your English has improved a lot! I was raised by a Grammar Nazi and I came to appreciate the training later in life. It seems that Paolo is appreciated by you.

If I had to write and speak Italian with Paolo he'd have a huge job correcting me!

Not everyone is so humble as you. In fact, you're the first Steemian I noticed, who is appreciating this bot. Wherever I've encountered this bot so far, I've seen it being criticized. So I too responded to this bot by pointing out grammatical errors in its own messages ...and people labelled me a bigger nazi 😜.

Frankly, I won't be very welcoming to this bot on my blog. I don't like purists. I'm fine with the errors as long as the text can communicate the intended message. Nobody is perfect in this world and we should learn to be accommodating for minor errors here and there. In fact, most people don't even notice the errors and their trained eyes & mind automatically correct these errors while reading.

I accept that I ain't a literary genius and nor do I expect all bloggers to be a literary genius. The more important thing to me is the exchange of views and delivery of the core message.

And I don't expect this bot to visit you for every error you commit or to point out all the errors. (as you expect it here ...but may be I'm wrong. I haven't checked all the comments yet). This bot itself is not perfect yet. MS Word do a better job than this bot.

I'd prefer if this service is made opt-in or I consider it as spamming.

I think that your view is probably in the majority and that the business model will fail. Also the choice of name could be considered as offensive to many. @grammarfriend or @grammarhelper would be better in my opinion.

My mother tongue is English and I have a few degrees but I make a lot of mistakes. If English is your second language you are truly amazing.

An opt in our out could be a good idea. As far as I know we can use the ignore button and we'll never see this bot's comments again.

Thanks for your detailed response.

Can't agree more! A friendly name gives a lot of positive vibes to start with. To me, the first impression was that this bot was created out of someone's strong irritation towards minor grammatical oversights.

Maybe all will be revealed in due time!

This is getting serious.
I can imagine the embarrassment it has caused people already forgetting that most writers try to make their post in English, not because there are fluent but to pass their message to the majority who happen to understand only English.
I just wish people can guard their heart against this. I believe the bot was meant to help but it kindof embarrassing.
Thanks for sharing @kus-knee

At the risk of being pedantic, shouldn't he be calling himself the "Spelling Nazi" or the "Orthography Nazi" if he is checking spelling ;-)

Orthography
An orthography is a set of conventions for writing a language. It includes norms of spelling, hyphenation, capitalization, word breaks, emphasis, and punctuation.

A name change would be positive and while doing the change how about OrthographyFriend? That would represent a kinder gentler bot!

Commentators on network news routinely say things like "between you and I."

That or "between I and you" should make one's ears hurt . Or "who did you vote for?" instead of "for whom did you vote?" Nonetheless, I find it a bit much to spell check and grammar police blogs.

I actually heard a politician say, "Nobody hates terrorists more than me!" :-)

Thank you very much dear friend @ kus-knee for sharing this news, I must admit that I ignored the presence of this bot @grammarnazi, I have never had the luck to visit this bot, surely, because it would stay alive in my publications, imagine I am bad writing in my native language, Spanish, as not be in English that uitlizo the help of google.
In my case I am not bothered by construction criticism, siver to enrriqueser and be better people.
I wish you a wonderful day

Well, there are almost a million of us now and it made only 60 visits yesterday so I guess that it is a rare privilege to see the bot in action!

I admire you for what you do and for your excellent dual language blogging!

May you and your family have a wonderful day!

I don't think @grammarnazni is wrong in any case. If bot is pointing out your mistakes and they are some gramatical or spelling mistakes then you shoudn't be offened by that.
Even you should encourage and appreicate that it read your whole post to come to the conclusion.

You make 2 valid points here. I think that the bot just mechanically looks for mistakes and cannot read and express genuine appreciation for your article.

Yeah you have a point there as after all it is a just a bot for now lol

I hope It doesn't start making his own language the way bots at facebook did and then they had to close shut that project down.

I could only benefit if the @gramamarnazi decided to visit my posts.
Unfortunately I think that the amount of misspelled words and grammar mistakes would overwhelm it and ultimately force it to terminate itself.

I'm actually amazed at how well you do! Your competition in the SteemBay auction received his cards all the way in India!

How cool is that?

He put up a nice post about it!

Yeah I saw it!
I congratulated @crytotrader for recieving those amazing steemtradecards.

Thank you for the compliment but my English is far from being perfect : )

:) , yes idem ditto over here !

Well if it going to worry about apostrophes, Im in big trouble! Why dont they code it to put the apostrophes in for us lol. Well I guess they have bigger fish to fry LOL

I know what you mean. I proof read and proof read my articles before pressing post and I just don't see the mistakes! If I get @lellabird60 to read them over she sees them right away!

I will probably flag it just because I hate these types of comment bots!! :0)

Go get em tiger, er I mean Lion!

Lol, I will!!!

is it not just a kind of kinky? :-)

We can always learn and improve. I have been know on occasion to be a grammar NAZI so I better be able to take it. LOL. Actually I have one follower who, on occasion points out errors of mine. When done tactfully and with kindness, it can be a positive experience. Thanks @kus-knee as I will keep my eye out for him.

I was raised by a Grammar "Nazi" and I have learned to appreciate the training that I received. When counselling tact is important and starting with a word of commendation helps a lot!

Thanks for th visit @enjoywithroy!

Some people are really offended by the word "Nazi". They'd likely have a problem with the bot just for that.

… people are weird.

I have come to realize that if you think someone isn’t weird you don’t know them well enough! :)

There are worse bots out there. At least this one is trying to be helpful. I don't think calling anything a 'nazi' is a good idea. I've seen Godwin's law in action when people resort to calling other Steemians Nazis, but nobody is likely to get killed here. They should just call this thing grammarbot to avoid offence and have some way to tell it to go away. Some other bots will stop if you tell them to.

The name is definitely ill conceived unless it was meant to provoke.

lol... I bet that account will be rich in no time.

Time will tell!

Great!
I'm one of kind boy who thinks my English is not good!
and always wanted to improve it!
That's why I have installed Grammarly.
now we have @grammarnazi to helps us in this regard!
i'm going to upovote his comments too!

Cool! I've heard of Grammarly. Do you like it?

well, first its not a premium version.
and yes I like it!
it points out my mistakes.
even writing this comments it pointed out m three mistakes which I will correct using Grammarly.

@kus-knee where is @goodvibrations?
missing his quotes :(
he hides somewhere :(

yes, I missed the quotes too :)

yeah :( hopefully, we will be able to see him soon!

Well, stay positive, and it will come...it means we have to pay attention to the last quote he posted ....and let it sink in for longer ;)

;) yeah, I'm surely going to do it for sure!

Maybe I need to spot an error in your post too, to get an upvote!

Just Kidding!

I would love to welcome @grammernazi on my posts and share some upvote love with it, I love to improve, wherever and however I can!

BTW, you created a good example on how to face that bot, now people will know what to do when the nazi bot comments on their posts

You know what? I've sent tips to people who have corrected me in the past.

I don't know but I can't focus on people's mistakes that much that I can focus on their abilities/potential.

I would be a shitty grammarnazi!

Thanks though, and maybe others can take a look on your post and help you improve your mistakes(if any), because I think you proofread all your posts, it will be difficult to find a mistake, maybe that bot was just lucky!

May be, you want to put a space between the first bracket and @ in (@rinkuzblog) in case you really want to tag that person.

N.B.
I'm on Twitter with same handle as here ...if you wanna experiment with SteemTipper 😜

It clearly says what it's going to do.
I mean the name "grammarnazi" says it all..
Why'd you get hurt about that..
I think it's good, but the rep is taking a hit.
People really can't take criticism

Yes as a busines model maybe the name could have been a little different. @grammarassistent? Or @grammarhelper?

That would have been better.
The name grammarnazi makes it seem like it's out there to get you

Just awesome post ..Resteem This Post man

Or should it be @gramarassistant ?

Even though I'm not native in English, I've been writing in the language for about 10 years, on a daily basis.

And I don't mean just phrases like "gg wp" if I'm playing a game. I'm talking about articles, ebooks, tutorials and guides. I know that I'm not skillful enough to write in perfect English, but I've realized that I'm good enough to express myself properly in most cases so I wouldn't care about a visit from this bot.

I would probably never upvote the comment and just ignore the comment most of the times. I seldom flag anything.

Thanks for your opinions. It's a type of a social experiment and as a business model I think it will have a tough time!

Firstly, I like to thank you for writing about this correction bot, I never knew we had such an asset here. I am also extending a warm heart regards to the initiator of this bot. Thank you Mr initiator..
Secondly, I feel it is a bad attitude to flag or downvote a bot with this level of intelligence and selflessness to serve us and make us become better writers.
I will sure upvote this bot and also recommend to my friends as well. I love this.
Thank you @kus-knee for sharing this.

Your soulfriend
@Geekis.

Sir its really a great attempt should be appreciated by everyone obviously first its mean person habitually criticize others but if you are serious and sincere i want to guide you step by step just my attempt to support your post or blog ....
First and foremost, all grammar rules should be at your fingertips.
Pay attention to what you read ,hear and never miss any opportunity to correct others humbly .
Never overlook mistakes, you should be sincere to your work,after all.
Paractice makes you perfect
Go ahead . Correct your friends and even family members and too a random strangers , beware of angry reaction ,though.
And here probably on steemit you can improve your skill read comments on popular posts where confirm you can encounter your mistakes.
And more important in grammar nazi .Use a proper punctuation.
Volunteer yourself as a proofreader for your friends and acquaintances specially.

Getting to know new things is a great achievement in ones life , your ability to acquire new knowledge will make you standout among the crowd nice one @kus-knee

Owo great service. Nice bot. Actually I don't use bot normally. But I will try this bot.

To me people should not get angry on it. They should appreciate that a bot is trying to help them instead of resentment. We should learn from our mistakes and try not to give bot another chance of fixing. Be cool. I wont be annoyed I'll upvote it.

Thank you for big support. See you on the top

Oh, I think he spends a lot of work on his neck with my spelling hahaha, thanks for the warning , and your constantly positive attitude :)

thanks for Grammarnazi information!

Lol when I started blogging about 2 years ago way before Steemit the grammar nazi's used to break me down and I used to feel a bit self conscious about my content and sort of shy'd away from posting in fear of being criticised and then I realised the only reason people would really check my spelling is

  1. They are generally trying to be helpful
  2. They cannot fault my research, my writing and my quality of content so they look for ways to knit pick my authority on a topic by attacking my spelling

Either way, it doesn't affect me much anymore as long as I can connect with my audience and bring them value that they understand it's all that matters. Hopefully ,I do improve my spelling along the way too

Hi kus-knee in dutch this means kissing your knee, 😂
I have met the nazi , I think he is RIGHT only the name nazi is for us dutch a bit intimidating.
But he visits me not so much so that must say that I paid attention in school😉 have a Nice weekend with the receive/recieve upvote
GREETZ from Holland

aangename kennismaking jou ben ik precies nog niet tegen gekomen ! :-)

Dank je wel , ik ben hier om te blijven

I believe the @grammarnazi to be wrong in the following instance:

[-]grammarnazi (10) · 3 hours ago
You have a minor grammatical mistake in the following sentence:

But if we can start to become friends with ourselves better then we will soon see we can manage life much better.

It should be better than instead of better then.

@carface is not wrong, because the words 'better than' has to refer to something else, as in a comparison. He uses the word 'then' because it refers to time, as in 'then we will soon see'.

I apologize for not knowing how to box the reference LOL

Dammit, he never came to mine. I'd appreciate it. I use Grammarly though, it's a great tool for people who suck with English (like me).
Maybe he would do better if there was no "nazi" in his name.

Me llama mucho la atención la Gramática, Buen Post.

many helpful information this post..thanks for sharing @kus-knee

i will have infinite mistakes lol

It would be an honour if @grammernazi visited my posts. I could benefit from my mistakes.

The i before e except after c rule seems to be one of its favorites. That's the only one I've seen it correct, many times. Initially when I saw it I didn't put much thought to the likelihood of it being a bot, and just figured it was someone with way too much time on their hands.

It has yet to visit me, but it should have. It is welcome.

I try hard to get the spelling and grammar right. Been out of school for a long time, wasn't that great in the spelling and grammar part when I was there. I would appreciate the nazi as long as it didn't down vote me.

I received a visit from @grammarnazi a few days ago. It did annoy me as I was proofreading my post and was in the process of repairing the error it cited. It kind of feels like the same thing when @cheetah arrives even after you cite your sources.

Thanks for information @kus-knee

I would love the grammarnazi bot to visit my page and correct every spellings and punctuation mistakes I've made. One more thing, I hope it will not cause a massive wreck to its system right after doing mine.

Great show, I like it!

Well, if the bot is plainly incorrect, as it is in the example above from the post by @carface, it's plainly annoying and worse than pointless. People using 'then' in place of 'than' is one of my personal pet hates, but in this instance, the bot is wrong. The sentence in question is a bit of a mess, but changing the 'then' to a 'than' doesn't rectify the situation...

If, however, its suggested corrections WERE actually correct, I can't see why I'd be any more annoyed by it than I would be by running a spellcheck on my work before posting. (Which I never do, so perhaps I will be 'visited' by the bot at some point!)

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Until now I didn't receive any visit from the Grammar Nazi, but I think I will appreciate. I am far from perfect and I made lots of mistakes until now.

This is such a cool initiative.Bot that will help to correct grammar fails made in posts,banal but useful.However the description of this bot should be changed since it is insulting people with almost no reason.Why the hell would you call somebody illiterate for making a little error?Or even foreign people like me.English wasn't first or even second language that I started to learn so I wouldn't call me illiterate if I can fluently write in two other languages and Im trying my best to improve my english by writing and discussing with people.However really interesting post.I had no idea about grammarnazi bot😂🤗

That's hilarious.!! I haven't seen it yet....key word, yet.

I make typos all the time so it should be just a matter of time.

How will I react? I will probably feel embarrassed so that means my feelings would be hurt or stung somehow. I mean, who likes to be called out on something trivial? Our posts are not writing contests. We do our best for the most part.

And who is said bot? I would like to flag it but I don't think I have enough voting power to do so.

A while back, I wrote a small poem.....a few lines that I considered to be more of a quote thought if that makes sense. A fairly new steemit user (who I didn't know) left a comment about how unoriginal my thoughts were and then wrote a two paragraph explanation of how I could use my imagination better and thoughtfully left examples. Well!!! I was flabbergasted to say the least. Who does that? I didn't ask for his opinion. lol

I got over it. I graciously thanked him for such a well thought out lesson for me and my readers. He did the same thing to my husband (who is a writer). But inside? I wanted to blast him to eternity . 😇

So to answer your question - no I do not like bots like this. Not helpful.

I just realizes this is a 9 day old post.....I wonder if there is a bot for not paying attention either? hehe
Also, I don't like the nazi part of the name as a few have pointed out too.

The end.

I am in real trouble now! Thanks for the warning. 🐓🐓