Bringing idioms and slang into the mix is a whole other can of worms. Thinks can get muddled enough between the North of England and the South of England. It can get mixed up just going from Liverpool to Manchester (Which is about 40 miles distance), so you can imagine how bad things can go between England and Australia.

As for the grammar cop thing, I'll sometimes point out a common mistake if it's repeated, but I like people doing it for me as well (as long as they aren't dikes about it). I know my spelling isn't perfect and if I'd like to improve it where-ever possible.

I applaud Grammar Nazis for doing a fine job. Text is the only form of communication on a forum, so when I see someone who writes like a [censored], I assume he's a [censored]. Just like if someone doesn't pronounce words correctly in real life, it would be strange. I don't mean someone who writes "it's" instead of "its" by mistake, I mean someone who consistently uses poor punctuation and doesn't put effort into his sentences. This may exclude foreigners (and even though I'm a foreigner, I don't exclude myself).

EDIT: Substitute the censored part for "idiot", or something like that. It's funny, because the word I chose isn't a rude word, and it's much more eloquent and nice than "idiot". :laugh:

Semantically, this thread has little to do with semantics.

Its more about proper forum etiquette and the methodology behind advancing petty arguments.

I know. I'm not too happy with the way it turned out, but it's better that literally every other forum I posted it in. I guess that's a win.

One guy (Sorry guy, didn't look for your name. You're a really cool guy though!) posted a great example of a Grammar Nazi encounter that happens frequently at places like the WoW forums. It's actually a pretty good example of how an argument about semantics could derail a thread rendering it useless. Let's see if we can focus on that, eh?

So two questions. Why do people feel the need to point out such small things? (Of course, disregarding all the perfectly acceptable reasons already pointed out in this thread. Please, someone be irrational for a second and tell me why.) Why does everyone who witnesses such a thing feel the need to put their two cents in further derailing the thread?

Semantics is the study of meaning. It typically focuses on the relation between signifiers, such as words, phrases, signs and symbols, and what they stand for.

A semantic argument would about whether Shepard in ME2 is ‘technically’ a clone, or if Fallout 3 is a “Fallout” game, or if the Christian cross and the letter “t” are the same symbol.

You’re asking why some people in the forums you frequent are jerks. That has little if anything to do with semantics. It’s just easy to be a jerk anonymously on the internet if you want to and many people bow to the temptation.

My entire quibble with you is semantic

You do know that you can scroll down when you're writing a post, right?

Yea Veeno, but I was using quick reply. So one of those guys were on a different page, the other was on the same page but I guess I got lazy. I'll sort it out when I'm back home from work. I'm crap at navigating from my phone.

Ah yes, that would explain it. I never use my phone to go on-line - tried it once, never doing it again. :nope:

As a general rule, I try everything twice before never doing it again. That didn't work out so well with that "How many chilli peppers can this schmuck handle" test though. I thought I was having a stroke.