Commenting on blogs: is it useful to advise on language skills?

Since I began my blog a few months ago I’ve also started to Follow other bloggers. Some are on a constant sales pitch (boring), while others are writing brilliant stuff on interesting and inspiring subjects (exciting). You’ll probably recognise this.

So I check out the subject matter and, if it’s something I like the sound of or it’s from a blogger that I admire, I’ll decide whether to ‘Delete’ (1 in 10), ‘Skim read’ (3 in 10), or ‘Read’ (6 in 10). These figures are approximate but I hope you get the idea.

When I read, or even skim read some of the blogs I’ve noticed something that I find difficult to deal with. Well not so much ‘difficult’ to deal with but rather ‘not knowing how’ to deal with. Leave a comment? Make a suggestion? Ignore? Up until now I ignore and move on. But this seems to me a cop-out.

This is my dilemma

I was at a garden centre and saw a woman with her fleece inside out. She was at her car and I guessed she was leaving work in a bit of a hurry. I walked over and told her about her fleece and she was so grateful that I’d saved her the embarrassment of being seen like that in public. It was something I’d want someone else to do for me.

What I’m seeing on some blog sites is similar in that the writing has linguistic or syntactic errors that the writer is not aware of. I notice it especially in poetry, but in some prose writing too. It’s not down to poor proof-reading, but often due to an incomplete knowledge of English. But whereas I had no difficulty in telling the woman about her jacket, I’m very hesitant about telling a stranger about their writing. It is such a very personal thing that so often comes from the heart if not the soul.

What should I do?

Quite a few of the bloggers I follow write poetry and some say that they want to make a living from it. Much of the poetry is very good a lot of the time, but sometimes there’ll be expressions or words that don’t work in English, and rhymes that don’t rhyme due to weird English pronunciations. I have to stop reading as I’ve lost the meaning or the message or the rhythm. There are probably others who feel the same.

So should I continue to keep quiet? Or is there a way to write a private comment? Is it possible to ask bloggers whether they’d appreciate feedback? I would be so grateful for your input.