Do you ever correct someone’s grammar?
You know what they’re trying to say but you just can’t help it — you have to tell them it’s “which” not “that.” I get it. I resist the urge pretty much every day. If you like being the grammar police, then you probably also can’t resist telling someone when they’ve got a fact wrong. Don’t fight over the facts!
The other day my daughter came home from school exasperated because some boy in her class insisted there were no term-limits for governors or the President. She went at it with this boy and they’re not talking.
My daughter and her schoolmate were fighting over a fact.
Oxford defines a fact as “a thing that is indisputably the case.” Put simply, a fact is something that is true.
And adults behave this way too. I recently watched too grown men fight over whether you could control people posting on your Facebook timeline. One thought you could. The other thought you couldn’t. You can. It’s a fact. These two men aren’t talking either.
I’ve just recounted two instances of people not talking to each other because they argued over a verifiable fact.
How can this be? It’s because the person advocating for the truth inevitably embarrasses the other person when proving him wrong. And in this day of the Internet (and Google in particular), it’s easy to verify a fact. Then the other person feels stupid and doesn’t want to be your friend anymore.
As I’ve gotten older I’ve come to desire a certain level of peace and quiet in my life. One way I achieve that peace and quiet is too follow this rule: I do not argue with people over easily verifiable facts. I’ll take it a step further: I don’t humiliate people over indisputable facts.
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