I recently had a coworker point out to me a grammatical error I keep repeating, flush vs flesh, that he had reminded me of a year ago.

I recently pointed out to a different coworker some whitespace inconsistency in a pull request in a similar fashion as I had pointed out a while back.

In digging deeper into both situations where I was the reporter or the reportee, the issue came down to legitimate lack of agreement on whether it was indeed a mistake.

Yea, unless you're professional writers, and I don't mean coders, that's not the right kind of things to focus on in pull requests. I mean, if someone happens to be great at code but really terrible at English, like you can't imagine they passed high school grammar, maybe it's a good idea to help them improve. But the average college educated developer writes well enough to write succinct and readable code comments and documentation. Or should be able to.

Even when we learn from a mistake it may still happen in the future. Hopefully we have reduced its frequency but it can still happen.

For example, I sometimes write "too be honest…". I've known it is wrong for decades, but occasionally am still not able to see it. Still happens about one out of every fifth time.

> I recently pointed out to a different coworker some whitespace inconsistency in a pull request in a similar fashion as I had pointed out a while back.

Just use transformers :)

Ask them how you can help them not to make the same mistake again. Not knowing the specific situation makes it hard to offer specific advice, but in software there are specific tools (e.g. IDEs, linters, CIs, tests, etc.) that help people avoid known mistakes. Sometimes having better docs or specific checklist (e.g. "your bug must have these fields filled in before we can work on it") helps.

If that doesn't help, ask the manager the same - emphasizing you are not attacking the person but looking for a way to stop wasting time on correcting the same repeating mistake which adds to costs and decreases productivity. That may generate some resentment (so trying to resolve it directly first is prudent) but if you avoid framing it as a personal fault it would usually help.

The problem to be solved is why the person doesn't learn or change when they know about the mistake, not the mistake itself.

You might start by directly asking, "Why do you keep making this mistake?" It might be because they're careless, or lazy, or maybe they really don't believe it's a mistake (they just acknowledged the mistake to get you to go away). Or maybe they just need a little help, such as automated reminders to get them to check for those mistakes.

Sadly, there are people who will not learn from either kindness and teaching, or harshness and harrassment. In the workplace, you can make an appeal to the manager, but perhaps only after discussion with coworker has failed to produce the desired results.