Grammar nazis can't help them(our)selves
From a column in last Sunday's Philadelphia Inquirer, by regular columnist The Grammarian:
A new study in the Journal of Neurolinguistics from researchers at the University of Birmingham found that when certain people come across grammar errors, their bodies respond physically.
Heart rates change. Stress increases. Bad grammar activates the part of our nervous system that provokes the fight-or-flight impulse we get when being chased ... like by a tiger. All of that happens when we encounter someone breaking grammar rules. To some of us, it can feel like an attack.
Interestingly, we don't respond so violently when the errors are made by a non-native speaker/writer or someone with an accent (Polish, in the study).
So there's a scientific explanation for why bad grammar makes us angry. That's the good news.
The bad news: It's biology. It's instinct. It's the tiger that won't stop chasing us.
And there's nothing we can do about it.
= new reply since forum marked as read
Maybe I should put a disclaimer at the beginning of each post that I’m writing in a Polish accent.
I foolishly put my disclaimer in my signature line.
Reread the word or phrase over and over to try and get the intended meaning, same with punctuation. I try to correct my errors when I see them after posting. I guess that's why people asked me to proof their writing when I was in college. It was interesting when working with someone for whom English was a second or third language. Their first language always interested me. My best friend had me proof her work all the time, English being her third language, her first language lacking elements of English making translation/transposing challenging.
I learned, also, that I'm dyslexic.
English, I have learned, is messy, steals from other languages all the time and usually ends up breaking its own rules regularly. But some of us are rules keepers, it's in our nature for some reason.
I have also learned to keep it to myself ...in silent anguish most of the time.
So it comes naturally. 
but I try not to loose too much sleep over it and their are bigger things to worry about
Like the fools who think "a lot" is one word. 
Without a doubt, I am one of those "certain people." I have to really watch myself and tamp down the almost irresistible urge to correct people who are committing assorted usage errors.
My husband has a couple of pronunciation habits that bug me. He voices the silent "t" in often, which I know some dictionaries say is OK, but is sounds affected to me. The other annoyance also involves the letter "t" - he adds it to across and says "acrosst," which makes me grit my teeth and I resist with all my might the impulse to snarkily respond, "There's no "t" at the end of that word."
He also sometimes uses "myself" instead of "I." For example, "John, Matt and myself are going to meet for lunch." I have no idea where this came from. 
Current pet peeves -
1. Making a possessive from "I" - Mary and I's vacation - 
2. The possessive of guys pronounced as "guises" - Your guys's/guys'es garden looks great." To my distress, I once heard Rachel Maddow use this. 
