The Guide to Crazy Comment Personality Types – Part 2
Hopefully you were able to catch our previous introduction to crazy comment personality types. Last time, we covered the delights of First! Freddy and Angry Andrew.
As we move along into the second half of our list we will be introduced to two more delightful characters. This week: Grammar Gertie and Self-Promotion Sammy.
Writers and bloggers beware.
Grammar Gertie
Nothing can make a writer feel more like a complete idiot like Grammar Gertie. These Internet mavens are famous for jumping into any article to tell you how many unforgivable grammar and spelling mistakes you have just made.
Whether it’s not enough o’s in “to” or too many in “loose”, Grammar Gertie is there to expose your dirty little spelling mistakes to the world.
I like to picture Grammar Gertie as a blue-haired, horn-rimmed glasses wearing, retired English teacher. With her face inches away from the monitor she carefully examines each and every word while muttering phrases like “That’s an incorrect comma splice!” or “She better pick up these dangling participles.”
Tsk, tsk lazy Internet writer.
I’m sure if Grammar Gertie could find a way to mark up her monitor with a red pen, she probably would.
How to deal with it:
What has to be the most frustrating thing about the Grammar Gertie types is that they are almost always right. Isn’t it true that they were the ones that got perfect marks on tests on sentence structure while we slept through English class?
Tsk, tsk lazy Internet writer.
So while Grammer Gertie is almost certainly correct, it is far better to learn from our mistakes than give in to our first impulse of throwing a brick through her living room window.
Another often used technique is to blame everything on our Editor. After all, shouldn’t they have caught all these embarrassing mistakes?
While a sharp-eyed editor is worth their weight in whiteout, as a writer we should really be personally responsible for proofing and correcting our own work; no matter how brain numbingly boring that may sound. Besides, Editors have better things to do – like lie around all day by their swimming pools as they drink dry martinis from their solid gold cocktail shakers.
I’m on to you Editors! [Ed Note: Don't listen to Travis! ...I prefer mojitos with solid silver spoons.]
A note to writers who write in a second language: If you’re learning English as a second language and you’re brave enough to write in it, I say go for it!
Grammar Gertie’s will constantly be jumping down your throat when you make mistakes, but they are just jealous because they only wish they could write as well in your native language as you do in theirs.
You’re an inspiration to people who know how difficult it is to learn another language. Don’t let the spelling Nazis discourage you from letting yourself be heard.
Self-promotion Sammy
Ahh…good old Self-promotion Sammy. No matter how good a job you’ve done in writing your article, Sammy is there to tell you how much better he is than you.
These are the types of guys who liked to pick on you in school but would break down in tears when the teacher called on them.
I’m looking at you, Steve!
Whether you’ve written a tutorial or an opinion piece, Self-promotion Sammy will either have a link to a better article he’s written or a put down on how bush league your work is compared to his.
My favorite Self-promotion Sammy has to be the guy who rips your work to shreds and then refuses to show any of his own work. They’re enough to make you want to jump into your car with an IP Google Maps application and a jerrycan of gasoline.
How to deal with it:
The best way to deal with Self-promotion Sammy is just to ignore them. More than likely your other commenters will call them out. And there is something very satisfying about seeing one of these guys being called out.
However, if you find Self-promotion Sammy is often showing up with a link to one his own articles, chances are he’s a SEO spammer. In cases like that, delete his comments with extreme prejudice.
Another version of the Self-promotion Sammy is Sexy-photo Sally. These are typically spammers that are disguised behind a photo of a pretty girl. They often have comments like “Great article. I learned a lot!” while their name links to a web hosting company or something similarly spammy. Feel free to ban Sexy-photo Sally immediately.
And by the way, Steve! Guess who gets the last laugh now that he’s an Internet superstar? And I told you you couldn’t hang a guy on a coat hook by his underwear. The light fabric clearly couldn’t hold my weight.
Stay tuned for next week when we conclude our guide to the crazy comment personality types!
Leave a Comment
I think you mean that editors _lie_ around all day, not _lay_ around.
Sorry, couldn’t resist! Good article though; I appreciate the honest tone.
Obviously I had one too many gold-plated mojitos while editing.
Fixed! Thanks for keeping me honest!
Keep this series up, it’s becoming a fun one to laugh about.
Chill Travis,
Steve can’t read anyway.
Thanks – I’m going to check out the last post in the series, and I hope you’ll keep it up – it’s a fun one!
I think the best rule of thumb for commenting is a spin on what most of our mothers told us when we were kids: “If you have nothing nice to say, better to say nothing at all.” (and by nice, in this case, I mean contributive in some way)
(I sometimes have the urge to be the Grammar Gertie, but I’m usually able to resist!)
Travis, oh how right you are. Thankfully, I’ve been able to somewhat avoid some of these types in my current site, but when I was doing a “creative writing” blog, I got a lot of Grammar Gerties. Just kind of seemed like another version of Self-Promoting Sammy there, though. They just wanted to show off their own brilliance. It rarely works for them. Thanks for posting.
Is enabling commenting on blogs even worth it? I’ve read many blog pieces where the comments overshadow the story itself in sheer volume, and often neutralize or confuse what the blog piece was saying.
The blog is *your* forum, not a public commons. There’s no disgrace in moderating comments.
This, of course, is a comment to a blog.
This is funny. Great article. I learned a lot….. oops don’t want to be called the ‘Sexy-Promotion Sally’.. haha. Sometimes, I tend to be careful commenting especially on some TechCrunch blogs cos I dun want to encounter the angry Andrew. I dun care if Grammar Girtie is on…
‘There’s no disgrace in moderating comments’ ~ agreed with @Don.
I’ve read it, Travis, and I’m coming to ye!…
Oh crap.
I am loving this series and hope that you guys keep it up. I have had run-ins with all of these personality types so far and I despise the over done self-promoters the most.
I love your writing style by the way.
As for Grammar Gertie, I’d say that I am analogous to her. Save for the fact that I’m a 45-year-old man, I am guilty.
In my defense, I troll web critique forums and will offer my opinion to people who ask for it. Often enough, and rife with broken English and egregious misspellings, the post they submitted mirrors the grammatical styling of their web content. I cannot and will not abide that. If I can count ten of these mistakes in the site they want critiqued, I don’t even bother.
If, however, I notice few misspellings and reasonably correct grammar, I make note of them and then I stick to other aspects of successful web design.
My advice to those whom English is not their native language: Hire someone. Look, if you’re going to represent yourself as a professional, your web content is every bit as valuable as the clever, colorblind adjusted color theme, jQuery plugins, the layout, the navigation, etc. And while some other-than-English-speakers give it a good try, they sometimes fall short. So, towards that end, if you get constructive criticism for misspellings or grammatical errors, take it in the way it was intended; to help.
Now, when it comes to the reading of an article or popular blog, I am more critical. Creating content for these forums voluntarily exposes writers to criticism. They are asking to be believed. They represent themselves as providing important opinion or news. Writing correctly is paramount to gaining that trust. The best television and radio news personalities historically have had a ‘voice,’ a personalized way of delivering their message that engendered that trust. Not that I expect that level of talent from every copy writer or web developer, but it’s not a bad thing to strive for. I’m not great, or even good to some, but I try.
Why am I going on like this? Because it bothers me that as the global interwebs seeks out every nook and crannie of the civilized world, and many that have yet to be given that designation, the proper use of the English language has undergone a process of elegant degradation. A defacto carte blanche is given because, ‘They don’t speak the language,’ or, ‘I know what they mean.’ Left unchecked, it will relegate its use to abbreviations, anagrams and emoticons.
It occurs to me that I may appear to be Anglo-centric. I’m not, at all. I embrace the notion that the Internet is Earth’s global village, representing us as a race, as opposed to nationalities or borders. The recent events in Egypt are an example of this village’s robust communications network. Yet, I’m sure there are people the world over that butcher their own vernacular. I can’t speak to that, but to those Grammar Gurties out there around the world: Keep up the good fight and save your native tongue! My native tongue is American English, and I’m conscious of my use of it. Are there Grammar Gerties out there, right now, who would love to tear into this? You bet, and I invite them to succumb me to the death of a thousand cuts.
In the end, this is a cautionary tale. Don’t throw Gertie under the bus. Simply look at it as advice, and free for you to accept or reject. Don’t take it personally unless you have every right to take it personally. You should never have to endure ignorant remarks, nor should you necessarily even respond. But there are righteous Grammar Gerties all over the world, and we’re just trying to save the human race.
Is this adam guy for real? His comment is longer then the article, he’s probably going to tel me its “longer than the article”
If you are a writer, you might have done so much of your own proofreading and editing that you feel you really know what you’re doing, and it has likely occurred to you to try and pick up some work doing these things on the side. This is actually not a bad idea at all.
Thank You for posting and let us know about this.