The FlavaEverybody knows the world's worst people are the ones who never miss an opportunity to explain the difference between who and whom. Those "friends" who are pretending to be policing spelling and grammar for the sake of posterity are probably just flexing for attention, or so it seems to everyone they're interrupting.
As a study from the University of Michigan recently found, those people aren't just annoying, they're also apparently huge jerks.
The Misery
The Full Study
Their wrong about this. What was the studys affect size.
ReplyDeleteI think other research has born out that there wrong, about this.
You have won the internet because I am biting my tongue!!!!
DeleteUrrrgggghhhhhfhhsdhfh clenching the desk.
DeleteHah!
DeleteSo am I being disagreeable if I point out that it appears to me that the SFgate article is written in such as way as to imply that extraverts are agreeable and introverts are disagreeable (not something implied or assumed by the original study, as far as I can tell from a quick skim)?
ReplyDeleteI have to admit that, as a composition teacher, I was delighted by an earlier account of this study that I read. As I noted a post or six ago, we get a bit tired of colleagues who just want us to find a way to keep students from committing typos or grammos (even as we sympathize; those things are annoying, distracting, etc., and reading past them to get at the meat of the argument does take practice, and sometimes intense concentration, which is one of the things that makes grading papers really tiring -- and frustrating, and exhausting, and somehow also boring. In short, miserable.)
As a huge jerk, I feel compelled to point out that "one of the things that..." should be followed by "make" and not "makes," since grammatically the subject is "things," not "one."
DeleteYou are correct.
DeleteErrrr, isn't "things" the object of the preposition "of"? Therefore, the "makes" is working with "one" and, therefore, correct. I read "that" proceeding "makes" as a relative pronoun with an antecedent of "one," ergo--"makes," as in: One makes many errors when trying to corrected others' mistakes, doesn't one?!
Delete(Open fire. I can take it!)
The Gog
For example: One of the men in the play IS naked.
Oops, meant to take out that last example, although it's related to the whole sordid affair....
DeleteGrrr...just found another error! Shoot me! PRECEDING. uGH.
DeleteToo many developmental comp essays.
"You are correct," she wrote, doubling the entendre.
Delete@Gog, perhaps you can think about some things that make you go "hmmm." You don't have have to think of them all---you can even think of just one of the things that make you go "hmmm."
One of the men who are in the play is naked.
DeleteOne of the things that make me go "hmmm" is how all the other characters in the play are acting like that man is the best-dressed among them.
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DeleteSteven Pinker discusses the number of “one of those things” in his book The Sense of Style: “For more than a thousand years the siren song of singular one has overridden the syntactic demand of the plural those, and writer after writer has gone with the singular.... Usage guides today suggest that either the singular or plural is acceptable in this construction, depending on whether one or those looms larger in the writer’s mind.”
DeleteThanks. I was wondering why both sound OK.
DeleteLike others, I think it's a big leap from "reacts negatively to typos/grammos" to "is a jerk".
ReplyDeleteAlso (and correct me if I'm wrong), the PLOS study was not even about people who correct others' typos/grammos on Internet discussion boards. People snidely correct others over things well in excess of written word. Maybe those people are the true jerks.
So again, SFGate is practicing leapfrog logic and painting with a broad brush.