A Bulletin from the Grammar Police

Lately, a number of social media posts have begun to irk me.  It's not their content that bothers me, but the rampant mistakes in grammar and spelling that accompany them.  Don't get me wrong, I've had quite a number of mistakes as well.  Just look at some of my earliest posts, back before I had a computer.  I only had ten to fifteen minutes to type something out, so they were often short and laden with problems.  However, such is the nature of social media.  Mistakes happen, and they are corrected when they reach a level considered too bad to remain.  For any readers who don't know, I am going for my Masters in English.  This means that I am becoming qualified to inform others that they are making mistakes in grammar.  It could literally be my job to do so, especially if I get a teaching assistant position.  Yet, the past week or so, the mistakes are taking a toll on me.  It is becoming harder not to point out every single error I find.  If someone asks for advice, that is another matter.  I like helping people out when it is in a field that I feel knowledgeable in.  English is the most commonplace of those.  Many of the others are so esoteric (literally so, as many of these fields could be filed under New Age) that I rarely get the chance to use them.  Yes, I humblebrag about my expertise whenever appropriate.  If I find a minor misspelling or other error that changes the meaning of a post, I point it out.  But only if I know the person.  If it is a stranger or someone else I don't really know if I know, I let it slide.  I might be a tad upset about it, but I usually won't point it out.  This is extremely so in instances where English might not be the poster's first language.  I am involved in a few groups where this is true.  Sometimes, a post has errors that make it hard to understand.  Usually, I let those slide by as well.  I wouldn't want to offend the person by pointing out something they themselves might know is wrong.  I usually only bring it up if I can't understand the meaning of the post.  If I can guess the meaning, then I won't bring up anything about the errors.  However, there are limits.  Recently, a poster on a group I follow, but don't belong to yet, has been posting a series of somewhat funny ideas.  Practically none of them are correct.  Misspellings abound.  The grammar is so haphazard that the intent is hard to understand.  If I were a member of this group, I would be correcting this person's posts on a regular basis.  I think English is their first language, but it's hard to tell sometimes.  The grammar could be intentional, on some level maybe?  The other members of the group are starting to tire of these antics.  It could be the constant posting, but the errors can't be helping matters.    I try not to interfere, but such errors are starting to get to me.  Simple typos are fine.  The occasional wrong word is normal.  A flood of errors will send me over the edge.  I would be replying to such a post with a complete reedit of the contents.  Just because you're on Facebook doesn't mean you shouldn't try to write well.  Write right everyone.  Write right.