[lone-commenter]

Those are typographic eccentricities, to be pedant :)

And they're not even that uncommon on the Internet and amongst tech people. (See the Jargon file[1], for example.)

But I get your point: pedantry is often needless, and sometimes even lacks proper justification (see taejo's comment). But it's difficult to stop seeing errors when you see them, so I would forgive the parent for being that Hacker News guy.

[1] http://www.catb.org/jargon/html/writing-style.html

[def8cefe]

No, it's English grammar. (EDIT: Actually it's not. See, there are mistakes everywhere. It's not typographic either though.)

There's nothing to forgive. My comment was instruction on being a better reader/listener.

Focus on the things people are saying and not nitpicking their delivery and you will absorb more information.

[lone-commenter]

> Focus on the things people are saying and not nitpicking their delivery and you will absorb more information.

I agree. Form is not so important.

[def8cefe]

It's something poor students/learners do. You spend all your time looking for minor errors in instruction or text so you can 'win' while missing the actual lesson or overarching idea. I am definitely not innocent of this as a former high school dropout lol. Cheers.