A co-worker is always 'correcting' our grammar and spelling, making it wrong. What can we do?

Good language skills are imperative – for getting good grades or securing (and keeping) a job. 

In month 18 of the pandemic, with the delta surge crowding hospitals and our brief period of merry masklessness direly ended, focusing on the niceties of language may feel about as worthwhile as pointing out to the Titanic's chamber orchestra that they're just a touch out of tune, but I think it's important, sulking at home in our softest clothes, to remember that the words we use, and how we use them, paint a picture of us, and that communicating effectively – yes, spelling counts – is still something to aspire to. 

I'm a grammar guru. I can't do anything about public health, but I can sure as heck speak up for hygienic public discourse. 

Question: I have a colleague who never hesitates to correct the word choices, grammar and even pronunciation of direct reports as well as peers and higher-ups – in public, with absolute certainty, and often violently incorrectly. Surely there are basic rules of etiquette about this sort of thing, aren’t there?

Answer: I correct people’s English for a living, and even I would never do it publicly and unasked.

If someone who reports to you misspells something key in an email, particularly one addressed to a larger group, it’s easy enough to point out the error – nicely, respectfully, supportively and as quickly as possible – in a private email. (Not in a voice-to-voice conversation, I’d say. Match your media.) If the spelling problem is pervasive and you fear that it reflects badly on both your report and you – which, I’m sorry to say, it does – you should certainly consider suggesting that key emails going out into the world should be passed by you first – “just to make sure everything’s OK,” or something equally, I fear, unconvincing, but a boss has got to do what a boss has got to do. Then you copy the email, correct it (fully and silently) so that your colleague can see simultaneously what it was and what it now is, and return it. If your report can’t see the problem even then, well, then, you’ve got a bigger problem, and you’re going to need to have a bigger conversation.

Beyond that: Tread lightly with your peers, unless you have a great craving to be That Person. In responding to an email with a spelling error in it – “forward” where “foreword” is meant, for instance, to cite the single most popular mistake in the book publishing industry, in which I labor – you’ll of course in your response use the correct spelling, and you might, if you’re feeling daring, silently and unobtrusively correct the error in the original email and hope that the misspeller will notice and learn something.

As to the orthographic errors of your higher-ups, that’s what snickering is for.

On the subject of correcting people’s pronunciation: Again, you might consider a quiet chat with a report, but otherwise, drop it. I like to think of the idea – I’m not sure who originated it, but it’s lovely – that if someone mispronounces a word, it’s because they learned the word by reading it rather than by hearing it, and you should respect that. I’m sure we all have our own “epitome” stories, and sooner or later luck or providence always seems to straighten us out. I recall once giving a young person a copy of a James Joyce work and hearing him, as he enthusiastically praised it a few weeks later, refer to it repeatedly as “Duh-BLY-ners.” I didn’t have the heart to correct him – if anything I thought the earnest mispronunciation terribly sweet – but happily he eventually asked me, and I hope it wasn’t because my eyes were twitching, “Is that how you say that?” Problem immediately solved, and no harm done.

And your colleague, the one who told you at lunch that you don’t know how to pronounce “bruschetta” when you sure as heck do know (with a k noise in the middle, for the record, rather than a shhh)? I wouldn’t hesitate, especially if there are other people around, to respond, with icy politesse, “No, really, I’m quite sure about this one. Especially as I used to mispronounce it all the time and was finally called out on it in public by an actual Italian, and how lucky for me!” That ought to put an end to that sort of nonsense.

Benjamin Dreyer is the managing editor and copy chief of the Random House division of Penguin Random House and the author of the bestselling "Dreyer's English." He lives in New York City. Follow him on Twitter: @BCDreyer