My Guidelines for Correcting English. To begin, I should say, I am not an expert on the English language. My only claim, like many of you, is that I am a native English speaker. While I believe that my English is at least average, I make omissions and mistakes all the time. So, keeping that in mind as I correct the notes and questions of non-native speakers of English, I use a few guidelines that I think are useful. I want to preserve as much of the original posters note as I can. I try to resist the urge to completely rewrite what someone has written. If it is not grammatically incorrect, and it is understandable, although I might could have said it better, I leave it alone. Learning a language is, after all, a process. If someone writes something flippant, I ignore it. If they are not taking it seriously, why should I? If someone writes with a lot of shortcuts, for example, cuz or wanna or gonna, I ignore it. I don't know if they know the correct words or not. Maybe they are just trying to be cool. As for my friends here at italki, I usually will not correct their entries right away. Editing is a subjective process. I want to give others a chance to interact with them. However, I will not forget them. If their entries stay uncorrected for an inordinate amount of time, usually a couple of days or so, I will correct it. In short, because so many people have taken their valuable time and corrected my entries, I feel a responsibility to do likewise. I take it seriously.