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Basically my question is related to the following question:

Should we correct (or point out) language errors in questions?

English is not my mother tongue and mostly i make mistakes in writing which are of grammatical and proper word-order type.

Just take an example of above paragraph, I used 'i' instead of 'I'. So can I put sentences on the site to ask the community to help me if I have made any grammatical or any other error while constructing the sentence?

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Short answer: it depends. Long answer: you have to be as specific as possible.

Broad questions along the lines of "please proofread this" are likely to get closed. However, if you have a specific problem with word order, capitalization, spelling etc., go ahead and ask.

In other words:

  • "Can you look at the following sentence? I have no idea if it contains any mistakes or could be better worded." — Off-topic.

  • "Can you look at the following sentence? I think it contains the following mistake: [clearly state what you think is wrong and why you think so]." — On-topic.
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    +1 These are great examples. I don't mind proofreading a sentence if the asker makes it beneficial to the community.
    – Chris
    Nov 2, 2010 at 15:24
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If your question is beyond problems with word order, capitalization, and spelling, you might consider posting on Writers.SE. They will take certain types of writing critique questions. Their guidelines are very specific and do not include proofreading requests, for instance.

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