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This is a pet peeve - I automatically correct all instances of "Being a (woman/ avid reader/ general irritable person etc.)" to "As a...".

Intuition tells me "Being a " is incorrect. However, I have seen three instances of its use in articles today alone, and many more prior to this - is this a widely propagated mistake that I can continue to (forcefully) correct?

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  • No. Rational students of language aren't allowed pet peeves. English is not your own private language.
    – Greg Lee
    May 11, 2017 at 1:16
  • @Greg Lee Your opinion is appreciated, but a pet peeve is surely personal. It would be different if my choice of alternative was incorrect (which it has not proved).
    – sccs
    May 11, 2017 at 1:53
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    You cannot correct it, because you are wrong, and the original is perfectly fine and grammatical. Stop it. Stop it right now. And never, ever, do it again! ;-)
    – Araucaria - Him
    May 11, 2017 at 9:21
  • Talking about pet peeves, why do you write "prior to" (two words, three syllables, Latinate) instead of the single two-syllable English word, "before"?
    – David
    Jun 17, 2017 at 19:19

2 Answers 2

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Both ways, how the sentence is written and how you read it, are correct. Being is here a participle introducing a participial phrase that modifies the subject of the sentence, and your replacement with as will preserve the phrase's meaning in all instances I can imagine currently.

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  • thanks - but I think I may have phrased the question in an unclear manner earlier. I take from your answer too however that "Being a ..." is not incorrect.
    – sccs
    May 11, 2017 at 0:57
  • Sorry for the unclear answer (the fault was mine). Fixed now.
    – Khuldraeseth na'Barya
    May 11, 2017 at 1:02
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It may be worth noting that the few dictionaries that list being as a conjunction, do so with reservations:

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    The nonstandard usage cited, such as "Being it's midnight, let's go home", is different from the OP's examples, such as "being an avid reader".
    – Lawrence
    May 11, 2017 at 1:23

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