BEING A GRAMMAR NAZI

Grammar Nazis are the bad boys on internet. They are like bullies who push you into the pool despite knowing that you don’t know swimming.
But they don’t have any nasty intentions. Maybe they just want you to learn it the hard way.
The point being, they are not that bad.

Now I don’t know if I am a borderline Grammar Nazi, but double negatives piss me off. Ain’t nobody getting away with those.

That being said, I know how Grammar Nazis can be, and can spot one easily.

They are in abundance on YouTube. I recently saw a comment thread on a music video, and spotted a fellow Grammar Nazi:

Unsuspecting victim: You dont know how to sing. Your a loser
Grammar Nazi: You don’t* know how to sing. You’re* a loser
UV: But I dont sing, man
GN: (Cracking the knuckles) This is going to take long.

If you have ever lent your notes to someone, and had them back with random apostrophes and corrections in a different ink, chances are that you have
just had a close encounter with a Grammar Nazi. Take a moment to thank God for the easy escape.

They are extremely dedicated.
You can hand them your unedited essays and you will have a professionally corrected one along with one black eye and twisted fingers so that you may never
find yourself able to wield a pen again.

So, we Grammar Nazis are not that bad. We can be quite helpful at times.
But being a Grammar Nazi isn’t easy.

Whenever we see ‘quite’ spelled as ‘quiet’, we try to keep calm and ignore it. After all, how can a misspelt word in a shabby notebook in the classroom of a school
in a small city in some corner of the map possibly affect the world, right? Wrong.

We may be cool on the outside. We may even say “Oh, I just love when people don’t get their spellings right!” We may go as far as making a little smiley near the
misspelt word just to show that we are  okay with it. And why do we put on this show? Because we value friendships. Because even we want to be a part of
potluck parties. Because even we want to barter flowery headbands for some stone bracelets.

But inside, a part of our brain just goes all insane. Just like a small mark of chalk that the teacher leaves out while she rubs the board makes you a little crazy on the inside, this misspelt word can be extremely cancerous to the Grammar Nazi’s mind.

And even if we successfully resist that urge, we are in for more trouble. The impact of such a close encounter with wrong spellings is not a pleasing one.

We would stand by the window while it is raining, tracing the droplets with our
fingers, our head solemnly pressed against the wall, thinking about the unfortunate spelling. And we have to wait for the rains.
Because randomly tracing your fingers on the glass window, when it is not even raining, is just stupid.

Dark circles and a complete loss of appetite are some common physical effects of such misadventures.

We would sell our souls to the devil if we could get one chance to correct that damned spelling. In the words of Dorian Gray,
“Yes, there is nothing in the whole world I would not give! I would give my soul for that!”

So please bear with grammar Nazis. What we are doing is just public service, after all.

The next time a Grammar Nazi corrects your ‘there’ to ‘their’, just regard them with a sympathetic look and buy a dictionary immediately.