The Grammar Police are around online in their thousands nowadays.
They are ever watchful and incredibly quick on the draw. Whenever the tiniest grammatical error, typo, or erroneous spelling mistake hits the ether of the Internet, they are onto it. And in a flash.
So fast, I might forget about the tedious task of proofreading my blog posts from now on. All I need to do is wait for the Grammar Cops to do all the hard work for me.
It’s a marvelous, free community service that will save me hours and hours of tedious work.
The Grammar Police are at your service
I stumbled upon the idea when I made a very clumsy error.
I wrote a new blog post.
But it was well after midnight by the time I had finished.
So I left it sitting in a WordPress draft and planned to do my proofreading and format checking the next morning.
As always, I thought it better to be fresh to do all that sort of thing before hitting the publish button.
However, because I was quite tired, I accidentally clicked the wrong button on my WordPress editor.
Instead of clicking Save Draft, I clicked Publish.
I didn’t notice, of course, and I went off to get ready for bed.
I grabbed my phone to set my alarm.
Quick service
But as I did, I noticed three new notifications on my Twitter feed and a site contact message.
Yes, they were messages from four wonderfully alert Grammar officers.
One was even kind enough to post a small image of the grammatical errors they found in my text.
It was complete with little red correction marks. How wonderfully thoughtful. Thank you, officer.
When I checked the link, I realized straight away what had happened. I had carelessly published my draft blog post.
It was published and live on my blog, complete with typos and errors.
But I hadn’t done my routine grammar check, as I had left it until the next day.
I ran back to my laptop and started correcting some of the most glaring errors in a flash.
Phew! I had saved my writer’s reputation or at least salvaged it.
As I headed back to bed, I realized something.
The Grammar Police are fast, efficient, and vigilant
And as I discovered, they are much more helpful than I could ever have imagined.
And how nice was it of the one officer who went to all the trouble of sending me an image?
Complete with those little red proofreading correction marks.
Clearly, these Grammar cops must be well-equipped. They probably have hundreds of RSS feeds, Google Alerts, and other clever techie tools to track new blog posts.
With this technology, they can instantly peruse texts for the slightest sign or hint of grammatical and spelling offenses.
In my case, one your instead of you’re. I did double my offense, though.
I had copied and pasted part of this offending phrase for emphasis, so I got into double grammar trouble.
My grammar lesson
Anyway, the upshot of this little episode is now quite clear.
I can save myself a lot of time and energy.
All I have to do is sit back and rely on the efficiency of the grammar police to find all my erroneous errors and slips.
No need to agonize over my blog posts, proofreading and correcting before publishing.
All I need to do is publish. Then wait for the Grammar cops to leap into action and save my bacon.
Within thirty minutes, I can quickly scan all their suggested corrections.
Then make the edits where needed and quickly republish my absolutely perfect text.
That is before anyone other than the members of the Grammar Force has had a chance to read it, of course.
What a cunning little plan it is.
Their, they’re, there; I am only joking and pulling you’re leg.
Related reading: Do Usually And Normally Share The Same Meaning?
this makes no sense lol. no need for comma and their makes no sense, at least you tried
yes i agree
It appears that most errors are simply typos, I think that most people actually DO know the difference between your and you’re but made a mistake which proofreading should eliminate.
So the answer to stopping grammar police is proof reading.
If you still have errors, maybe you deserve their attention and should learn the rules!!
And if you STILL have errors, you might deserve all the trolling you get.
For a while my email signature said “Profread, porfread, poofread; it’s very impotent.” People kept emailing me back to point out my errors so I gave up on humor.
Your sign should read,They’re there for you. Not ,Their they’re for you.
Somehow, I think you missed the humour. :)
Love the spellcheck too! Write posts in Word.doc first to organize, and correct grammar, then copy into WordPress to publish. Works for me! Christine
There is an excellent way not to upset them! Edit each and every post before pressing the publish button. Mind you, you can always go back and edit once published, but then you wouldn’t hear the end of it now would you? Damned if we do, damned if we don’t Derek ;)
I feel for you! I published a draft one time, and now I’m a nervous wreck every time I write a post for fear that I’ll make that mistake again. I’m happy to see you can have a sense of humor about the situation, and thanks for sharing so we all know we aren’t alone!