DEAR ABBY: Many times, my co-workers make grammatical and punctuation errors in emails they send (both internal and external) or misuse words on conference calls. Is it in bad taste to mention to the individuals their misuse of the word "there" versus "their" or "your" versus "you're"? One of the most common spoken grammatical mistakes is, "I seen it" instead of "I've seen" or "I saw." I am not sure if they would appreciate knowing they are misusing words or if they might become offended. -- HELPFUL IN FLORIDA
DEAR HELPFUL: If you see a co-worker consistently make grammatical errors, it would be doing the person a favor to point it out -- once or twice -- in private. However, to continually harp on it would likely cause embarrassment, come across as one-upmanship and cause resentment. The same is true about errors that are spoken.