You say you're concerned about perception and trying to help him. Honestly, do you think people perceive someone who makes a typo worse or the person who is repeatedly correcting them on an internet forum worse?
It's not a typo, it's a repeated grammatical error. I perceive someone repeatedly correcting someone else's errors as probably having too much time on their hands. I perceive someone repeatedly making grade-school level errors (as covered elsewhere, this is not a common ESL error) as not worth my time to even read. Up to you which of those is worse.
Was wondering if anyone would correct me for calling it a typo instead of a grammar error since if I wrote "your" instead of "you're" it would have been too obvious. Seriously though, I used to judge people the same way right after undergrad. I was young and thought people who made such errors were stupid. But, over the years I encountered some very successful people that could barely write and had to reflect a bit. "How is guy is a self-made multimillionaire when he can barely write?" I realized that my dismissing of people like that made me feel superior but it wasn't actually a good filter. Obviously you've reached a different conclusion by deciding that people who make grammar errors on internet forums aren't worth your time, so to each his own.
nbouscal|12 years ago
jcc80|12 years ago