I'm curious: what is your way of flagging typos or bad grammar to colleagues? I often just do it without much fluff around it, but sometimes some people think that's harsh or nitpicky, but I really don't think anything bad about them while doing so. Any advice? BTW I'm talking about documents/tickets, not in chats or internal mails or something
One approach is to make typo/grammar annotations only on the first page, or paragraph. Then add a clear note saying that you will only comment on the "big things" later in the document. This avoid demoralizing the author, while still sending a clear signal that something is wrong.
If you make detailed comments the whole way through, you run the risk of encouraging the writer to submit sloppy first drafts. Unless it's your job to be the writer's servant, think carefully before taking on that role.
My personal policy is not to do it unless someone asks for it. I think it’s an ok way to go about things most of the time. If I have ”skin in the game” with that text and it’s important, I try to nicely ask for a permission to edit things. In my experience nothing pisses any person, including myself more than when someone starts editing my stuff and possibly even changes the meaning of things as they go.
Way in the past I remember the absolute most deadly feelings I got when an actual editor for the first time jumped and killed half of my text before I had done any of my own edits on some website copy.
Writing is highly personal, and others, especially in a basic email, might consider you just excessively nitpicky while focusing on all but the relevant stuff at hand.
The worst thing that the person gets when writing wrong or excessively or whatever is that they will be misunderstood. Eventually it will come back to them in one way or another and they’ll improve and it’s their problem. If someone asks or you ask nicely on the other hand, that’s the way to go, is respectful, friendly and appropriate. Just be careful that they don’t start to keep coming to you with grammar checks :-D
Durable documentation should use good grammar and clear sentences, and there needs to be ways to either submit easy feedback or just correct them. We use Google Docs, and if somethings non-controversial I just fix it, if not then I add a comment with a proposed fix.
I'm less worried about tickets; they're read much less often, and need to be quickly written without lots of thought.
It depends on your relationship and where you're coming from. If you are using it as some passive aggressive power trip, then there is no good way. If people feel you're being nitpicky then maybe ask them why? If you're going through documentation that's meant to last a long time, then everyone should welcome fixes. But going through tickets, unless it's egregious, maybe there are better ways to spend your time? If you end up in a situation arguing about the Oxford comma, then step back and think about why.
Over the years, I have stopped caring about things like these (and many others). Bad grammar in source control, documentation and tickets is very inconsequential in the big business picture.
What is the return on investment, so to speak, in business terms, of getting your colleagues to fix their grammar in internal systems? If they take the time to do so, will business goals be better achieved? Will it bring the company more revenue? Probably not. It might satisfy your perfectionist tendencies but it is not your colleagues' job to do that.
