Lest You Think Me Snobbish

Regular cops have to defend themselves from stereotypes of donut and coffee-guzzling laziness, Taser-happy sadism and casual racism.  Grammar police get to field cries of  "stuck-up!" and "know-it-all!" from the great unwashed masses, and I have yet to figure out why.  I mean, just because we're inarguably better than you doesn't mean that we're snobs!

The thing is, though, we aren't, and I have no problem with that.  Can you imagine the pressure attendant upon any obligation to be perfect?  I'd turn to diamond, thus exponentially increasing my financial worth and completely killing my ability to type.  Furthermore, I'm pretty sure there's some internet law declaring that any post made to correct another person's spelling or grammar will itself contain some really egregious error (aside from the obvious "giving unsolicited criticism," which is a good way to ensure nobody will like you.)

If I went around grammar-policing online, I guarantee you it would take me about two seconds to spell "antidisestablishmentarianism" backward.  My tendency to type backwards when I'm tired (and I'm usually tired) is but the beginning of a laundry list of foibles illustrating that yours truly is, despite his internet persona of godlike perfection, only human after all.*



Of course, I make typos.  Sometimes my brain moves faster than my hands, or vice-versa, and entire words fall through the cracks in the keyboard to join its colonies of tiny rebel dust bunnies.**  Most spectacular, though, is when all the technical elements are present and correct, but, like Frankenstein's creature, form a twisted monstrosity instead of a presentable member of verbal society.

My favourite example hearkens from my unspeakably nerdy high school days.  I'm still a nerd, and proud of it, but at the time...at the time, I role-played.  Online.  By text posts.  In this particular scene, my character, a hard-nosed military commander, was interrogating a captured would-be assassin and I, sixteen and madly in love with drama, did my best to draw out the tension.  Instead - well, see for yourself:

"She stared her prisoner in the eye across the starkly lit steel table and, coldly and deliberately, shoved her glasses up her nose."

...Yep.  I want you to imagine that one.  My friend and partner in geekery just about broke a rib laughing while I sank slowly under my desk to have some privacy as I turned the colour of a canned tomato.

Humiliating though I found it at the time, in retrospect it's hilarious.  It also provides a stellar example of the importance of reading what you have written, with a critical eye to whether or not it says what it's meant to say, before you allow anyone else to read it.

*I might be a very large hobbit.  The jury's still out on that one.

**I keep cleaning the keyboard, but my t's, h's, i's and e's remain determined to double themselves half the time I type them.  Ergo, rebel dust bunnies.