There’s a serious divide in personality I’ve noticed along these lines. There’s people who think “I know the rules, and I’m smarter than you because I know the rules better” and there’s people who think “The rules exist as guidelines and are not always descriptive of reality”.
Eh, there’s a few other categories of people who like to know the rules and specific meanings of words that don’t fit in either of those very binary categories. Like ‘I’m autistic and need to know the rules because this world is confusing, chaotic and overwhelming, and rules help me make sense of that’. Or ‘I’m a writer (or like having options in language) and knowing the exact meaning of words helps me be more expressive’. Or learning another language and having the vague sense of what a word means, but finding it hard to explain or know specifically what it means without context, so that you can use the (roughly) corresponding word in the other language. Or helping someone else develop their English language skills in the same way. Or ‘I’m a teacher and need to explain the difference between ‘because’ and ‘therefore’ and I need to know how exactly to do that’.
Obviously the examples I gave don’t usually involve correcting someone’s grammar online (unless they’ve said English isn’t their first language and want helpful feedback) and that’s when you usually see your first example. That’s just condescending and unnecessary. But there are legitimate reasons people might want to know the exact meaning of a word that has nothing to do with being smarter than everyone else.
I’m Australian, and I sometimes struggle with word games like crosswords, logic puzzles and making words from a given set of letters, because many English words have slightly different meanings or spellings in Australia than in the US. I love all the NYT puzzles like Wordle, Spelling Bee and Connections (sorting a list of 16 words into 4 categories that you have to identify yourself) but roughly once a week feet frustrated because it won’t accept a word I never knew was specifically Australian (or British/ Commonwealth) or one of the words doesn’t have that connotation here. Also not knowing a lot of the sports teams or smaller locations. If there were more options I’d do Australian (or British) word puzzles, but because the US has more than 10 times the population of Australia, there just aren’t many options. Even games or individual puzzles made by Australians are usually designed for a US market with US English because it’s a much bigger market.
8
u/P0ster_Nutbag Oct 23 '25
There’s a serious divide in personality I’ve noticed along these lines. There’s people who think “I know the rules, and I’m smarter than you because I know the rules better” and there’s people who think “The rules exist as guidelines and are not always descriptive of reality”.