Ten Words You Need to Stop Misspelling (detail)
view the whole thing at The Oatmeal - it's great.
While blogging late at night, I've sometimes wondered whether an extensive study of blog comments would yield a set of emergent categories, which could then be organized into a sort of phylogeny representing different species of blog commenter. I'm not referring to politics, academic discipline, or favorite ideological hobby horses: I'm talking about comment writing style and what you can infer from it, independent of a comment's content. For example, you have no doubt encountered Grammar Nazis, Eccentrics, Lokis, and People Who Apparently Let Their Cats Type For Them. All of these characters could (at least hypothetically) be either far right or far left politically, hate science or love it, but what ties them together is the way they frame their comments.
The People Who Apparently Let Their Cats Type For Them are those commenters whose comments are so riddled with typos and errors, you can't understand them. Often, you have the nagging sense the underlying message may be revolutionary, pithy and brilliant - but you can't tell because too many words are missing or illegible. Damn cat cryptography! In addition to people who are chronically rushed and people who just don't notice typos, the PWALTCTFT cat-egory might be expanded to include people who make an unusual number of errors like those in the hilarious cartoon above, from The Oatmeal. Regardless, a really error-ridden PWALTCTFT comment often leads other commenters to a mistaken assessment of whether the PWALTCTFT agrees/disagrees with them. While I think Sb has a pretty low incidence of PWALTCTFTs, every once in a while you get one, and confusion ensues.
The antitheses of the PWALTCTFTs, the Grammar Nazis, must compulsively identify every flaw in a post. Sometimes they use these flaws as evidence to buttress their claim that I'm a bad writer, stupid, or a filthy Democrat. But more often, the whole point of their comment is to express their inner OCD rage: "AAAAGGGHHHH! TYPO!" (I envision them subsequently scrubbing their computer screen with Lysol and dumping their browser cache).
Don't get me wrong: Grammar Nazis are usually correct. I suppose they have every right to flag bloggers' errors. But since my blog's style is casual, I'll happily use sentence fragments, made-up words (BioE itself is a made-up word) and weird punctuation. And like any self-indulgent writer without an editor, I have foibles. Regular readers know I have been on an inexplicable "awesome" kick for the past year (everything is AWESOME! Visit this AWESOME LINK!!) So yeah, my writing is far from perfect. And I don't mind if the Grammar Nazis try to purge the internetz of dangling participles one blog at a time - even if some of them think I genuinely don't know how to spell "internetz". (I really do, guys).
Who can get Grammar Nazis particularly irate? The subversive Lokis (named for the trickster god of Norse mythology). The prototypical Loki is our very own Comrade PhysioProf, who delights in exchanging earburning profanity.
But it's not just profanity that identifies a Loki commenter - it's profanity deployed to shock and mock others in the service of a subversive message. Like bad-boy artists or radio shock jocks, Lokis have a clear agenda, they know exactly what they're doing, and they find the use of profanity as rhetorical weapon supremely effective and genuinely funny at the same time. Not everyone enjoys a Loki's sense of humor - many people find it juvenile. But Lokis don't take anyone seriously, including themselves, so Grammar Nazi outrage is powerless to silence their gleeful whoops of "F***ing douchebags!!!11!1 F***ing!!11!ELEVENTY!"
Eccentrics may be the most interesting group of all. Though I group them together mentally, they manifest in several different ways. The usual form of Eccentric likes to Capitalize Words. Messing around with capitalization is not necessarily a sign of ignorance; it can be exceptionally artistic and innovative (see ee cummings, Emily Dickinson, etc.). But the problem is that when I read a comment Written Like This, it always sounds in my head like a nasal Victorian chaperone with the vapors. Or, even worse, it sounds like a wicked satire of a Victorian chaperone with the vapors. So I start laughing, and want to retort in the same sarcastic spirit, which is not usually what the Eccentric had in mind.
"Unnecessary" quotation marks are another characteristic of Eccentrics, as are run-on or strangely structured sentences, mixed metaphors, foreign words, and oddly archaic turns of phrase. A paradigmatic Eccentric comment might look like this:
I hope you Realize that while you and your electro-eugenic "Scientists" think you are all so smart, "Obama" is not pulling Wool over Real Americans, who look to the Founding Fathers for their Understanding. You should read my much-Acclaimed Monograph on Ben Franklin, Einstein & the anti-Perpetual Motion conspiracy. QED!
I sometimes wonder if Eccentrics are in fact a troupe of clever performance artists using the blogosphere as a giant virtual stage. If so, kudos to them. They really mix a comment thread up.
My phylogeny of commenter writing styles is hardly perfect. For example, a comment WRITTEN LIKE THIS! - the online equivalent of shouting - could be by an Eccentric who prefers the aesthetic uniformity of capitals, by a PWLTCTFT who doesn't understand she's shouting (or doesn't realize their cat stepped on caps lock), or by a Loki who fully realizes she's shouting, and actually wishes she could shout in a larger font.
Another big problem with phylogenies (especially off-the-cuff phylogenies you generate while blogging late at night), is that some specimens don't fit cleanly into the predetermined categories. Bora has described the difference he perceives between politeness (superficial language and form) and civility (respectful discourse) in comment threads. A Loki is impolite, but not necessarily uncivil. A Grammar Nazi is usually both civil and polite, if unforgiving. But what about people who are superficially polite, but underneath, not civil at all?
One of the most amusing comments I ever got was this one, which I characterize as "pseudo-Grammar Nazi." Here's how it started:
Ms. Palmer, Your article garnered my keen interest, especially your use of word choice. As a Recognized Expert, teaching at the master's level, I have shown patterns to my graduate students in the courses I develop. I noticed one of these patterns in your article. Did you spot it also? When a speaker or author uses this word choice they are reflecting a certain uncertainty about their position. This is especially true if the word is used more than once in any particular address or article, which, if I read your article with the attention it indeed warranted, was the case in your response.
This comment is fascinating to deconstruct. The author starts out with a claim to authority - "I am a Recognized Expert, teaching at the Master's Level." Unfortunately, I've taught college myself and taken graduate courses in two different disciplines, and I've seen a lot of terrible teaching at the graduate level. So the fact that someone teaches master's students impresses me not one whit. (I'd be more impressed by someone teaching middle school science - anyone who can control a lab full of 13-year-old boys is a saint.)
Note that the author also implicitly devalues my authority by addressing me as "Ms." rather than "Dr." I don't generally go by "Dr.," but I hardly think it's an innocent oversight. Establishing authority is important here, because this commenter presents him/herself as a Grammar Nazi, concerned (for my own good, of course!) about an unfortunate pattern of word choice in my blog post and/or comments. Horrors! But note that in the course of displaying credentials, the commenter also revealed him/herself to be an Eccentric - with Random Capitalization. That undermines my appreciation of his/her Grammar Nazi skills a wee bit. As do the typos in the second paragraph (I'm just sayin'):
Have you read the fascinating article, Malthus Watch Out, by Ben Wattenberg which speaks of the crackling intellectual intensity of Julain [sic] Simon's? You might personally benefit from it. If you become familar [sic] with Simon's 1981/1996 cornerstone work, The Ultimate Resource, you might perhaps be more effective in your responses. Having thought through the position that natural resources are not finite, it seems to me that any of those defending eugencists [sic] at this time in their rapid decline for merely a current position and paycheck would do well to rethink his assumptions. I would like to know who prompted you to write it.
The central paragraph is the meat of the comment. Here, I am told that I "might perhaps be more effective in [my] responses" if I read two books, but neither one of them is "The Manual of Style" - the pseudo-Grammar Nazi is actually recommending two economic critiques of environmentalism, arguing that we are never going to run out of natural resources. Anticipating that I am not interested, the pseudo-Grammar Nazi then attacks my objectivity and credibility:
"it seems to me that any of those defending eugencists [sic] at this time in their rapid decline for merely a current position and paycheck would do well to rethink his assumptions. I would like to know who prompted you to write it."
Aha! Apparently I am a complete hack, advocating eugenics (which I never have, BTW) for a "current position" (as a blogger??) and a "paycheck" (the ad revenue I donate to charity?). (Wow - I clearly have my money-grubbing hack priorities straight!)
This is a classic case of a commenter using superficially polite cover for an unsupported, uncivil ad hominem attack on a blogger. The commenter isn't really a Grammar Nazi who actually cares about writing style, but something much less honest. The commenter wants to get a rise out of bloggers and derail any civil discourse on the blog. Which means this commenter is most accurately identified as that pervasive, invasive species, the Troll. Some people call Lokis Trolls, but I think the real Trolls are the disingenuous ones, who insult others obliquely.
By the end of the comment, though, we're back to the solicitous pseudo-Grammar Nazi persona:
Perhaps you wrote your article in some haste, under some time restraint or another. Your use of the word "honestly" did not strengthen the force of what you meant to say. It seems the author of the article you have responded to was careful in this regard, but perhaps he had examined his own position more precisely.
Indeed. I do blog under time pressure; I believe I was running late for work, and behind as usual on the laundry. So you got me, pseudo-Grammar Nazi: I overused the word honestly while responding to comments. Your cogent criticism makes me ashamed. I shall retire the word from my vocabulary and never use it again.
Honestly - I "really" Will. QED!
Feel free to add your own suggestions for new commenter species and/or links to your own all-time eyebrow-raising comments. . . in the comments!
- Log in to post comments
Sui generis.
This might amuse you: Learn too spell.
Drunk Commenting is my specialty. It can include all the above, but is generally hilarious because how can I be a grammar nazi with all those misspellings? I don't even own a cat to take the blame. At least booze greatly enhances my vocabulary, if not my sentence structure.
This sentence makes my head hurt: "Having thought through the position that natural resources are not finite, it seems to me that any of those defending eugencists [sic] at this time in their rapid decline for merely a current position and paycheck would do well to rethink his assumptions."
I became a much happier blogger once I embraced the idea that my commenters are my faithful copy editors.
Well you care a great deal about commenters. Thanks. Did you see Greg Laden's poll on what percentage of persons in the US have college degrees? 15.
Those commenters are trying something. I don't know what they're trying each one, I'd like to ask them. I do know that for them to get smarter they need to be around smart people. I know there are lots of other places they can go, for something, than science blogs. Thanks for taking them, us, in. I hope you find it rewarding.
There is a rule, the name of which I've forgotten, that a comment correcting someone else's grammar is nearly guaranteed to contain an error itself.
Bad Jim, that would be Skitt's Law (which the guy JP quoted broke several times).
This guy has done most of your work for you http://redwing.hutman.net/~mreed/
You know it's interesting, momkat, that excellent link you shared sort of does what I was trying to do (much better than I did) but also sort of doesn't quite fit my blogging experience.
I think it depends on if you think that forum dialogues are similar enough to blog comments. My experience is that blog comments, particularly here at Sb, have a self-contained PR element I didn't really see on the forum threads. It's like people materialize long enough to post their pre-written screed about their favorite hobby horse, and then vanish.
In the forum situation, relationships are generally ongoing across multiple threads. But here at Sb, the followings on different blogs overlap slightly but not completely, so there are weird dynamics when "outsiders" show up in a thread. I've been thinking a lot about those dynamics, and I didn't even try to capture them here, but that could be a whole other post - the Intruder, the Defender, the Ostracizer, the Placater, the Idealist, the Can't We All Just Get Along-er, etc.
The thing is, I find it kind of depressing categorizing people in that way - as if their personalities are fixed and unchanging. So with my phylogeny I was trying to just look at the text and style of individual comments, and stick to that. . . but it may well be impossible. What do you think?
I had a friend in college whose comments, chat posts, and emails were always filled with homonym misspellings. (Mite for might, its for it's, there for their, and so on.) She made assiduous efforts to use her spellchecker, but was severely dyslexic, and had no real "feel" for when a word was spelled correctly or not.
Aside from some gentle ribbing from time to time about her "online accent" we all learned to read her writing for what it was: The best she could manage.
I try to keep that in mind when I read comments with systematic errors that seem otherwise well put together. I also try to remember that any given poster may be an eight year old--at least when their content seems innocently mistaken or simple, rather than trollish.
Tamara, that's why I didn't suggest PWLTCTFTs are trolls. They're usually not; they're often oblivious to their errors, whether caused by cats, dyslexia, education, etc. Such comments only cause problems when they're incoherent enough that they confuse others involved in the conversation or convey an unintended message.
However, on a purely selfish note, I'll point out that as a blogger, constant errors would be totally unacceptable in my posts - I would get excoriated for them by my commenters. Although I have no urge to excoriate error-prone commenters in return, because I'm not a Grammar Nazi, it's a little annoying that I'm expected to be perfect in my own writing, but commenters don't even have to run spellcheck when they show up on my blog to tell me my opinions mean nothing. Just sayin'. :)
I tend to use Eccentric Capitalisation, but I'm hoping to personify the mid-Georgian gentleman rather than the Victorian chaperone.
And some capitalisations do have specific meanings. When I say, e.g., that "X had an adventure on the LIRR", that might mean that X barely escaped from muggers, or that X's train car de-railed. But "X had an Adventure on the LIRR" means that X had a sudden, transgressive, stunningly hot sexual encounter with an attractive stranger. Something of the kind works for "story" and "Story" as well. Or "native" = "someone born and raised in a given locale" v. "Native" = "someone from a non-industrialised, often tropical, non-English-speaking country where the locals wear ridiculous headgear".
""X had an Adventure on the LIRR" means that X had a sudden, transgressive, stunningly hot sexual encounter with an attractive stranger."
Really? Whoa.
Hi, Many, (some? most?) of this century's grammar nazis turn out to be mis-educated. They are parroting the rules they were taught. But many of those rules are simply wrong.
How Worng? ;-)
Wrong enough for a book!
The lexicographer's dilemma : the evolution of "proper" English, from Shakespeare to South Park
Next time a GN pops their ugly fore'ead into your blog, smack 'em with that 'ponderous tomb/tome/toam'. :-)
What do you call a commenter who's a bit like a Grammar Nazi, but who expresses their criticisms in a sort of passive-aggressive, snarky manner? (This often involves making an intentional misinterpretation based on the error noted.) Because I occasionally do this.
Since this form of commenting is best explained by example, here's one of mine from the other ScienceBlog I comment on occasionally: http://scienceblogs.com/dispatches/2010/01/top_10_christian_persecution…
(Reverend Pollen was a troll-- though one who may have let his eccentric cat type for him-- whose actual comments were wiped by Ed Brayton.)
Aside from comments of that sort, I'm more of a lurker than anything else; I try to comment only when I have a question or something reasonably insightful to add.
I think you're safe, Emily. :) It's hard to resist the opportunity to take someone down a peg when they are so obviously condescending (as I infer from the quoted bits & pieces in the thread). Your comment doesn't really fall into any of these categories - maybe we need a Snarky Zinger category?
Of course, you may be criticized for your snarkiness at some point, as I recently was when I lightly mocked the Eccentric Capitalization of one commenter. Sigh. People have no sense of humor about the ridiculousness of it all.
It's interesting that in that same thread, Ed Brayton is called a "party pooper" for banning the obnoxious guy. I've noticed that there is a perception that bloggers are obligated to allow any and all comments on their blogs, no matter how offensive, and that any moderation is censorship. It makes no sense to me - why is Ed obligated to put up with a troll who can't be civil? It's not like a blog is a public forum.
For the record, the person who called Brayton a "party pooper" is himself a bit of an eccentric/Loki, or at least very silly-- note that his username links to an Uncyclopedia user page. But I agree-- bloggers should have control over what's posted on their turf. However, I personally don't like it when all of the offender's existing comments are removed, since it makes the remaining posters look like crazies arguing with their own shadows.
There is nothing wrong with sentence fragments, used intentionally and in moderation. Run-on sentences, however, are another matter. As Bronze noted above, most of the "rules" these people declaim are not rules at all.
I think it would be fun to develop your own phylogeny. I have no experience with forums and am somewhat new to blogs, but do see patterns for both bloggers and their commenters. The dynamics are interesting. The only down side would be that you might color your responses based on your groupings. I like to go where lots of people pass by while I make up stories about them. They don't know it so no one is adversely affected. Your phylogeny could be the gathering of all these little stories you make up about your commenters. If you go public, those who are offended when they see themselves in a not-so-flattering category probably need the wake-up call. Pretty much everyone will be a blend of the categories. A pure type would be rare. The only down side would be that you might color your responses based on your groupings. Thanks for asking what I think.
BTW, I must confess to being a recovering Grammar Nazi who constantly struggles to keep my fingers idle over the random typo or wrong choice of word that I come across. Sentence fragments and noun/verb disagreements, on the other hand, get me all fidgety. They indicate sloppiness and cannot be suffered. Your writing is cogent and well constructed so thanks for helping me stay on the wagon, so to speak. I especially enjoy your random finds from the fringes.
I'm a terminology nazi.
Learn the difference between "phylogeny" and "taxonomy."
Oh, Sven. Where would a thread be without your condescending, passive-aggressive heckling?
Actually, nothing I said is inconsistent with the term "phylogeny" - I'm interested in how these commenter groups are interrelated. For example, are you as a "terminology Nazi" really a subgroup of Grammar Nazi, or are you actually a convergently evolved Troll?
Feel free to substitute "taxonomy" though, if you prefer.
The example you chose from The Oatmeal is especially pertinent. Using it's for its is almost emblematic of prominent science bloggers. PZ himself is one of the most frequent offenders.
I can't speak for other grammar nazis, but all I ask is that people try to spell, and that if they don't know how to use apostrophes properly; that they don't use them at all. "He look's at you" bothers me way more than "i didnt do it". I realise typos happen, and I hope that anyone I point out a spelling/grammar error to takes it in the spirit it was meant.
Any other possible grammar issues I tend to go with what Language Log says.
It is indeed time for a shout-out to the wonderful Language Log.
Taxonomy is calling someone names. Phylogeny is talking dirt about their mother.
*shrug* It's what I do. Why, have I *looks around* been here before?
Still taxonomy.
Nope. Not trollin'. Just correctin'.
Keep being wrong and maybe I'll come back though!
For now, I'm off to passive-aggressively heckle some other hapless sap.
Okay, let's take it to freshman bio level for you, Sven:
A phylogeny is a "tree of life" that shows how organisms are related to each other, boys and girls! They often share characteristics that they have inherited from common ancestors. So often - but not always - organisms that look similar are more closely related! If we draw a phylogenetic tree, we can show those relationships as branches! Yay! Now, let's all make a phylogeny and put trees, dogs, fish, cats and squid on it!
My commenter schema is a doodled tree which groups types of commenters loosely together by (hypothetical and totally unscientific) relatedness. It has no hierarchical taxonomic categories, and no binary key: just the very loose clusters of traits I described in the post. Therefore, I visualize it as a rudimentary phylogeny. As I point out in the post, one of the problems with visualizing it in this way is that I have no idea what shared characteristics indicate relatedness, since certain traits (such as SHOUTING) can arise for more than one reason.
It beats me why you are so invested in insisting that I cannot call a fictitious and frivolous evolutionary tree of commenter families that I doodled on scratchpaper a "phylogeny." But since it obviously is a burr under your saddle, you call it whatever you want, dear.
Dangling participles are common in the West. We have the old story:
Westerner - "That's where my horse is at."
Grammar Nazi - "You left a dangling participle."
Westerner - "That's where my horse is at, asshole."
Have you read The Deluxe Transitive Vampire by Karen Elizabeth Gordon? It's sort of a goth grammar book.
"But the problem is that when I read a comment Written Like This, it always sounds in my head like a nasal Victorian chaperone with the vapors."
And with this quote, you absolutely just made my day. :)
The philosopher/poet Rolli, author of Plum Stuff (http://amzn.to/buWMwJ) is, I think, my favourite eccentric speller of recent years.