Image from USC It's fair to say that correcting someone's grammar or etiquette in public is a worse show of decorum than the original offense. But what do you do when someone is blatantly in the wrong to the point that you or others feel uncomfortable their behavior?
If you are a parent, teacher, or employer, it is acceptable to correct your child, student, or employee respectively. But if you are a friend, coworker, stranger or even family member, there are a few different rules that should apply.
First, it is important to consider your relationship to the person as well as the necessity of making the correction (i.e. if the person was about to do something life threatening, by all means make quite a clamor).
The main thing to consider is to make sure you are correcting them out of humility. If you thrive on other people's weaknesses, it might be best to keep quiet. Another sincere way of helping them is to speak with them privately. Usually, correcting someone in public is very humiliating and reflects poorly on your character. This may not be true in some specific business situations whereby your knowledge could save time or money. But for the most part, patience with someone's lack of manners demonstrates your own.
If you do handle the private conversation tactfully, you might receive a surprisingly gracious response. Helping people avoid future embarrassment is a very polite thing to do. Remember that your correction should be for their own edification and not your own. And if they respond spitefully or embarrassed, let them discover their next error in their own time.
Making Etiquette Easy,
Susan K. Medina
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