Are you a strict grammarian?

[I spent the winter writing songs about getting better]

Generally yes. As most here know I never stand for misuse of "literally" and I get really bugged my you're/your and their/there/they're switching as well. "I could care less" is something else I never tolerate.

However there is one grammar "rule" that I find ridiculous and never respect or recognize, and that's that there is anything wrong with split infinitives. I honestly doubt anyone today besides middle school English teachers have a problem with that.

[I spent the winter writing songs about getting better]

No, and nearly everyone who claims that he or she is a "strict grammarian" makes just as many errors as the rest of us.

I've absorbed the rule against split infinitives enough that they sound odd to me, but there's no reason to follow it in most situations. The same applies to ending a sentence with a preposition. Not many people care about trying to make English work like Latin any more.

Errors are one thing, but just ignoring logic in some cases is a whole other thing. And when it actually degrades language and makes it more difficult to use (such as misuse of "literally") then it's a problem.

The stuff you mention in the second paragraph is just dumb though.

[I spent the winter writing songs about getting better]

God no.  I try to:
A.make my posts readable and
2.try not to embarrass myself too much


I normally spellcheck everypost and preview/reread it at least once (if not 5 times).  To do any less would seem to me to be counterproductive.  If you're going to bother posting, why not make sure it's as readable and coherent as you reasonably can?  If I'm reading a post and the person obviously didn't care all that much what it ended up looking like, why should I care about what they are trying to say?


...but I don't understand being a douche about minor spelling and grammar errors, especially if it doesn't really screw up the flow and it's obvious what the person meant.  That's actually much more annoying.  A smart person claiming they don't know what a poster (and it happens in real life too) meant when it's OBVIOUS what they were trying to say to everybody else.

And yet I recall you throwing a fit about opebo's adjectives as nouns thing...