Correcting our slightly less informed counterparts – faux-pas too far in the modern office?

On receiving an internal email from a colleague containing a tragically misplaced apostrophe swimming about the word ‘its’, it got me thinking. While misplaced apostrophes are a heinous grammatical faux-pas, the art of politely but pertinently correcting an equal on abuse of the English language, appears to be an equivalently horrendous social gaffe.

If anyone’s ever been smugly corrected by a bloated, pompous clever dick, they’ll understand the seething urge to commit acts of homicide. How do you avoid inciting this reaction in those you have to spend a sizeable chunk of your miserable little life with?

When one’s eyes become subject to the horror at the hands of a colleague’s ineptitude, what does office etiquette dictate? Point out the error? It’s in their best interests. After all, would an eagle-eyed client turn a blind eye? Possibly not. We all hate it when somebody lords it up over us. How do you tread this fine line? Your options are limited:

1) If it’s on an email, replying with the asterisk correction, e.g.“*its”. A classic put-down in the chauvinistic ‘calm down, dear’ style of Michael Winner and something often seen on Facebook used to devastating effect. Perhaps a little cutting when dealing with Linda from accounts.

2) Poking gentle fun at the culprit across the office, passing it off as a joke. In the public sector this would somehow get construed as bullying and you’d later find out that said culprit has crippling dyslexia and is crying in the toilets; thus compounding the problem.

3) A polite but formal word in their shell-like, face-to-face. Now in your head you’ve built up to this moment ever since you clapped eyes on the offending article. Rehearsed in your head the many pathways this conversation could take. It’s just a flipping apostrophe yet you’re doing the funeral march up to their desk, demeanour betraying a gravity that far exceeds that of a rogue punctuation mark. Result: round robin emails for Friday night drinks elude you. People are avoiding eye contact in the lift. You catch my drift.

Of course, you probably have your own perfectly effective and un-thought through method used at liberty. Perhaps it’s just my head that goes into a tailspin when faced with this small predicament, rendering me a socially handicapped über-geek.

Some may argue that small mistakes don’t need to be pointed out. That you’re just crossing the line into conceited prat territory. Surely there’s part of everyone that revels in the thought of an error from a colleague being left un-questioned to howl at all and sundry from the page while you look on from your pedestal, arms crossed, eyebrow cocked, knowing look.

So from this rather inconclusive outpouring, I have deduced that the social gain from withholding comment (unless specifically asked to check something over) is insignificant, however infinitely preferable to being that horrid sh*t that incites murderous lust in your miserable working carcass. Keep it in, people. And bite the heads off pigeons in frustration in your own time.

disclaimer: No pigeons were harmed during our research