There are some awful grammar gaffs on Facebook, which is now asking users to clean up their act.

According to The Associated Press, a number of Facebook users have omitted gender information in their profiles. While a seemingly innocuous oversight, Facebook's inability to determine gender has led to some strange looking copy in the News Feed, which has become the main artery for advertising efforts. For example, it is not uncommon to see the phrase: "Debbie changed their profile picture."

But grammar gaffs aside, the decision to ask users to be more precise with their language is part of Facebook's larger push to internationalize the site.

"We are trying to provide the best user experience for our more than 80 million active users around the world," a Facebook spokesperson said. "Being able to provide the most accurate translations and grammar will help clean up site language."

According to a Facebook blog post, users who have not shared their gender will be prompted to do so in the coming weeks. When users update their profiles, that information will be displayed on their News Feeds. However, that information will not be searchable.

Whether this will improve Facebook's ability to target ads will likely remain an open question. Facebook doesn't view the change as related to its advertising efforts, but it's hard to see an instance where advertisers wouldn't want to be able to target by gender. Being able to do so more effectively certainly wouldn't hurt the social network as it works to attract major brand advertisers.