Grammar Nazi
From Encyclopedia Dramatica
The standard response of the functionally illiterate when taken to task for their sins against the mother tongue is to label the offending party a Grammar Nazi. "Heil Grammatik" is a common saying for Grammar Nazis. Everyone hates Grammar Nazis because they are the ultimate lulz killers.
Contents |
I Dream of Genitives
As a young boy, Adolf Hitler had a dream: a dream of a world free of the stain of dangling participles and the mongrel menace of misplaced modifiers. It was a good dream...
The Worst Kind of Nazi
As stated previously, Grammar Nazi is a term given to one who incessantly corrects the spelling/grammar/usage of others. While the label is certainly an apt one, it is rarely, if ever, effective in its intended role as a sort of mini-invocation of Godwin's Law, because true Grammar Nazis, like their Teutonic forebears, have absolutely no qualms about their dedication to their fascist cause, nor their obsession with purity and order. "If the proper use of 'who' and 'whom' makes me a Nazi," thinks the Grammar Nazi, "then it is a fair price to pay for the cause—and, if a few half-assed constructions and poorly structured interrogatives need to die in the gas chambers for that same cause, then so be it, for it is a good cause."
Ironically enough, the epithet is all too often rendered "Grammer Nazi" by its oblivious user, further fueling the fires of the devotee of linguistic purity so labeled.
Historical Linguistics
Giving murky and unwholesome depth to the phrase "Grammar Nazi" are the actual origins of many of the grammatical conventions they wield as "law." Many of them were invented by self-appointed grammarian twats of the 18th century who decided certain things were mistakes because they thought English should work more like Latin, wanted a more "perfect" language, or were just anal control freaks.
From a linguistic and historical standpoint, these "mistakes" are completely artificial, having very little to do with how language is actually understood by normal people and having everything to do with egocentric aspies trying to systematize the English language, which is nigh-on impossible because English is a dirty, sloppy, schizophrenic whore of a language.
The very label "Grammar Nazi," which implies that there is even such a thing as a legitimate, totalitarian standard for English, is antithetical. If someone is proud to be a "Grammar Nazi," he or she is ignorant of the English language's history, is parroting grade school textbooks, and hasvery little claim to intellectual superiority.
A Grammar Nazi particularly goes into a retard divide by zero mode when they are confronted with the reality that constructs they hate, like "singular they", were constantly used by the famous writers whose ghey literature makes them wet their fursuits with adulation.
The Grammar Nazi Flame War
Grammar Nazis are prone to a curious form of geek cat fighting wherein they try to outdo one another by finding and correcting increasingly more obscure errors in each other's comments. Whoever identifies the final and most obscure error (preferably the one that requires a consultation with a resident linguist at Cambridge to understand) wins, and evidently has the bigger e-penis. Should you ever encounter a Grammar Nazi flame war, it is highly recommended that you do not attempt to drive or operate heavy machinery for several hours afterwards as there is no experience on earth quite as mind-crushingly boring, except perhaps two anime fangirl Grammar Nazis debating the fine points of Japanese grammar.
As a Drama-Generating Technique
The tendency towards Grammar Nazism can be exploited as a drama-generating technique in several ways:
The Wild Hunt
After a particularly pretentious Grammar Nazi (such as Hardvice) has posted something entirely tl;dr, a simple comment that states "grammatical errors: 5" will induce abject hysteria as the author attempts to locate and justify the alleged errors. This will invariably bring the author's Grammar Nazi friends and enemies into the fracas, and many long hours will be spent on overly grandiloquent name-calling and heated arguments about what's merely a non-standard but acceptable usage and what's just fucking wrong. Eventually, at least two of the Nazis will declare an e-Jihad, and unfriendly drama will ensue over the highly contentious split infinitive question, followed by each side signing the other up for bestiality porn newsletters to which each will later masturbate in secret.
The Grammar Trap
Another variant requires the trolling party to lay a grammatical trap, so to speak, by intentionally raping the language and lying in wait for the Nazis to spring. The troll then responds with either the image macro above, or perhaps a Fifty Hitler Post combining marqueed Hitlers with marqueed text to the effect of "LOL, GRAMMAR NAZI!!!!" Naturally, this is most effective in communities of, say, Holocaust survivors, or alternately the overly sensitive (such as anything with "liberal", "conservative", or "feminism" in the name).
The Grammar Smackdown
Simple Grammar Nazism is rarely enough to cause the terminally stupid much stress; however, correcting the entire post using strikethrough tags and red font tags and then assigning it a big fat F will almost invariably cause the victim to do just about everything short of posting scans of their grade school report cards to prove that they are not in fact retarded. Since the subsequent comments will without exception contain new errors to correct, the troll can keep this one up indefinitely.
For extra credit, you can print the original post, make all the marks using a red pen, write "Please see me after class" or "Unacceptable" near the grade in loopy, teacher-esque handwriting, and scan the whole thing in as an image.
The HTML markup required for the Smackdown is:
<del>grammer</del> <ins>grammar</ins>
grammer grammar
WORTH THE EFFORT
Gallery
 A healthy role-model for today's youth. |
 The logo of the Grammar Nazi. |
 Grammar Nazis are often fucking retarded, or English. |
 The Grammar Nazi's natural enemy. |
 Grammar Nazi Fails hard |
Notes
- Grammar Nazism is not to be confused with its egalitarian cousin, Grammar Socialism, in which everyone is free to yiff the English language until all of the punctuation and caps get jumbled and eventually fall out. (See: AOL speak.)
- This article automatically loses, according to Godwin's Law.
- Grammar Nazis have forgotten that the English language takes a bit of a breather on teh internets.
- Grammar Nazis, in all their apparent mastery of the English language have not yet got round to checking a dictionary for the meaning of the word "grammar". A spelling mistake is not a grammatical error; there is nothing grammatically wrong with the exchange "'O RLY?', 'YA RLY!'"
- Grammar Nazism was used to great effect in the exquisite movie Secretary, whose storyline revolves around Maggie Gyllenhaal and an S&M relationship with her employer, James Spader, who punishes her quite severely for spelling errors.
Common Grammatical Errors
- Doctor Whom is not Doctor Who.
- The ones in My Immortal by Tara Gilesbie. [1]
Grammar Communities
- grammarpolice
- grammar_mavens
- grammar_whores
- grammar_nazis - Now famous for the furry response to grammar: "grammer_nazi's comprises more than 700 members?"
See Also
- Raveneagel
- Nazi
- 卐
- You're/Your
- Progressive Nazism
- Facepunch studios
- Mark Miner
- Pantaloons
- Zero Punctuation
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Grammar Nazi is part of a series on Language & Communication. |
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