I ignore anyone who makes pedantic word-choice arguments when everyone is clearly capable of understanding what's going on. At best, it is more obsessed with their own cleverness than actual discourse, but more usually is just dishonest.
I worked with one person who weaponized pedantry. He thought he was educating everyone by being a complete stickler for his specialized vocabulary and would never just answer a bloody question, wasting everyone's time. He thought he was Socrates but he was the hemlock. Similar to a good project manager he was like a chain-saw: very effective, but you always want the tool pointed away from you. It also meant you really thought about whether you could get what you needed done with any other tool rather than pull out the chainsaw. Ultimately this kind of behavior is a productivity sink; forcing everyone into your rules because it'll be so much better when everyone just complies with how you need the world to be means getting worked around and giving the pedant's work to someone more pleasant to work with.
Please note: I'm not dinging people who sincerely need structure to help them function. This was a conscious choice just to be a jerk because in that person's opinion everything would be great as soon as we all thought exactly like he did.
I'm curious why people have to be so darned pedantic. It's not funny nor cute. And it makes it almost impossible to have any sort of enjoyable conversation with a normal person.
I don't mind the pedants, as long as they aren't assholes about it. I grew up in a bilingual home, so I am prone to certain errors in spite of generally being told I "write well". I am acutely aware that poor grammar and spelling can be genuine obstacles to effective communication. As long as pedantery (sp?) is not served up with a huge side of sneering, disrespect, pissing on people and similar, I think it has real benefit for the forum.
Being pedantic is pointless by definition. If you want people to take you seriously you should ignore the small, irrelevant details instead of just being annoying.
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