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Honestly, one thing I like about HN is that these sorts of corrections are made, and made respectfully. Their post was interesting because they're right: I'm a

Honestly, one thing I like about HN is that these sorts of corrections are made, and made respectfully. Their post was interesting because they're right: I'm a native English speaker and I paused on "medicament".

kbenson 10y ago
And yet it's a real word, just an uncommon one, so it's not really a correction, but a recommendation to speak differently presented as a correction. That can be fairly easy to take negatively. Personally, if I felt compelled to point out that it was uncommon, I would have said "At first I though medicament was a misspelling or autocorrect mistake, but when I looked it up, I found out it's a real word in English, if extremely uncommon. Interesting." That's less assertive in that a mistake was made (because it might have been used for effect), and also true.
- cgriswald 10y ago
  Your version comes across to me as more negative than how it was originally phrased. You trade a respectful and respectable assertiveness and directness for a passive-aggressive wishy-washiness which protects you from being wrong while simultaneously implying the other party is so tender your words can hurt them.
- unit91 10y ago
  Yikes, this is the kind of "feedback" that ends in divorce. I would never understand your version was intended as a correction. To me, this comes across as "thanks for teaching me a new word", and I would think "you're welcome".
  - kbenson 10y ago
    Because it's not a correction. An important part of what I was trying to say in my actual comment is that one should consider that there might be nothing to correct. In my version, I've conveyed my initial reaction as a point of reference in case that's something they wish to avoid in the future, and then that I discovered I was wrong. I suspect readings of it in a negative light are because of the context of the current conversation. Otherwise, I'm not sure how something that is essentially "at first I was confused and thought you were wrong, but then I found out I was the one that was wrong" is supposed to be taken negatively.

kbenson 10y ago

And yet it's a real word, just an uncommon one, so it's not really a correction, but a recommendation to speak differently presented as a correction. That can be fairly easy to take negatively. Personally, if I felt compelled to point out that it was uncommon, I would have said "At first I though medicament was a misspelling or autocorrect mistake, but when I looked it up, I found out it's a real word in English, if extremely uncommon. Interesting." That's less assertive in that a mistake was made (because it might have been used for effect), and also true.

cgriswald 10y ago
Your version comes across to me as more negative than how it was originally phrased. You trade a respectful and respectable assertiveness and directness for a passive-aggressive wishy-washiness which protects you from being wrong while simultaneously implying the other party is so tender your words can hurt them.
unit91 10y ago
Yikes, this is the kind of "feedback" that ends in divorce. I would never understand your version was intended as a correction. To me, this comes across as "thanks for teaching me a new word", and I would think "you're welcome".
- kbenson 10y ago
  Because it's not a correction. An important part of what I was trying to say in my actual comment is that one should consider that there might be nothing to correct. In my version, I've conveyed my initial reaction as a point of reference in case that's something they wish to avoid in the future, and then that I discovered I was wrong. I suspect readings of it in a negative light are because of the context of the current conversation. Otherwise, I'm not sure how something that is essentially "at first I was confused and thought you were wrong, but then I found out I was the one that was wrong" is supposed to be taken negatively.