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This has been on my mind for a couple of days, and now I realized that this is the place to bring it up.

Let's say someone posts a question that contains several instances of one of the most classical and blundering grammatical errors there are - of the type of their/they're, or definately etc. And let's say I edit their post to correct this. And then they roll it back :).

How should I/we handle it? On the one hand, the Edit privilege page states that

Some common reasons to edit are:

  • to fix grammatical or spelling mistakes

On the other, this is hardly the place to get into a comment discussion over grammar.

Your thoughts much appreciated.

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I think changing the grammar of posts is acceptable. Although I haven't yet seen it happen here in UX.SE, on other discussion sites if somebody posts a comment using the wrong "your / you're" language (or similar mistake) then numerous comments can follow which just point out this mistake and the thread can descend into a 'grammar war' and totally lose focus on the original purpose of the post.

(However, why someone would revert your correction back to something incorrect is slightly bizarre).

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  • Bizarre - yeah, tell me about it :)
    – Vitaly Mijiritsky
    May 11, 2011 at 18:03
  • I too failed to see why anyone would want to roll back what the editor thought was a perfectly good change - until someone corrected my UK spelling for the US spelling...but I'll roll with it :-) (I'm in the UK)
    – Roger Attrill
    Jun 29, 2011 at 5:55
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Our position on this is here:

http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2009/04/in-defense-of-editing/

TL;DR version -- edit all you want, just make sure your edits are substantive. If the OP resists, move on to other things.

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If someone rolls back an edit containing only grammatical corrections, I don't see a reason to make a fuss about it. Just let it be.

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