gam@proper.UUCP (Gordon Moffett) (12/23/83)
William Safire, a language columnist for the NY Times, wrote about this correcting of peoples' grammar, etc, as the "wiseguy problem": "Everyone who cares about the use of language is faced sooner or later with this problem: When the person you are talking [writing] to makes a mistake in grammar, or pronounces [or spells] a word mistakenly, do you interrupt with a correction? Or would such a correction be seen as a put-down, the action of a wiseguy? Or would failure to correct be taken as agreement with the mistake? "...Correcting a stranger's English is impolite at best, cruel at worst. It's being a wiseguy, who is the sort of linguistic show-off who has to tell you that 'wiseguy' and 'wisenheimer' were preceded by 'wiseacre,' derived from the Dutch word 'wijssegger,' or 'soothsayer.' As for the person taking pen [or keyboard] in hand at this moment to point out that Webster's New World Dictionary writes 'wiseguy' as two words -- you know what you are." [from his book "On Language"] [additions mine] 'Nuff said? Gordon Moffett (I care about the use of language, but not enough to offend people)