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Bad Grammar Loose in Public
It's still better than having little shapes !I went to an office for some training, popped to the toilet...
A little later, looked in the direction and saw a man enter the toilets. Told my colleague inductee "I've just seen a man go into the ladies' toilets"
You should have seen the look on my face when I went to the loo again and realised I'd gone to the wrong one the first time lol !
or was it bad grammar on the loos?I'd be out with my marker pen.
Haha.I went to a rocky horror show a few years back, all in costume. Chap (in drag) got in the wrong queue, decided he was wearing a dress so may as well use the women's loo as he had queued for 15 minutes as it was...
Anyway that sign has been driving me nuts. I don't think I noticed at first... I don't pay attention to the goings on in the men's loo but now I have seen it I can't help looking in the hope someone has changed it.
It's the feral apostrophe that raises my blood pressure. People will, even in printed signs, put one in a plural. MOT's, CD's, DVD's even the 1980's. Whip 'em out! They're plurals, not possessives.Right, I'm off for a lie-down in the dark!
The thing is I suppose we are so used to seeing them CDs, MOTs etc look wrong. The spellchecker gets 'em as well.
Oh there are too many to mention here! The worst is at one of Manchester's main theatres. The huge glowing sign in the foyer announces 'CONFECTIONARY'. *shudders*
Aye, you can't scrape that off with your thumbnail, can you! (I did that at a pet shop with Gecko's painted on the glass case!)
Stationery and Stationary are common ones. I have seen someone miss out the L in "public transport" which was rather unfortunate.With spelling I don't think text speak helps. My sis teaches English and someone submitted an essay written in text speak, it got a fail;)
I don't even use text speak in text messages. I have been justifiably called a pedant though!
Adam's your joking!I h8 that!
Oh to have a spell check. Mine went on strike yesterday with the message, 'word can no longer spell check this document as there are two many spelling errors!' I'd been having a fight with it over English US and UK. I set it to English UK, typed 'Did you see the colour of that...'It underlined colour, wanting to spell it color, and then the message appeared on the screen. They were the only seven letters of the document that I'd typed. It's old word software, and I guess it's a bit tired.
Hahaha. I think one of the problems with spellcheckers is they do not always pick up a correctly spelled word used in the wrong context. Although Word 7 one does.My friend had an over zealous, politically correct grammar/spellchecker. She writes fantasy and was using "maid" in the context of a virgin girl - spellchecker suggested "houseworker," it also disagreed with "husband," "father" etc suggestiing "life partner" and "life giver" as non gender-specific terms. Yes I can see the YA audience going with that.
Politically correct gone mad I would say... what's wrong with 'husband' or 'father'? Life giver... sounds like a Sci-fi/Dystopian spellcheck.
Imagine if you could get spellchecks for the different genres...
Father, life giver?It kind of make me think of a fashion amongst nobility that made the use of periphrasis a very sophisticated thing to do. Les préciosités. Did you ever hear about it? (We do in France while we are in school.)
There's a box transit (think that's what it's called - small white lorry, anyway) locally that's for a small hire company. Boldly emblazoned on its side is...'What's in you'r lorry?'
Oh. Dear.
Lol. They probably spend all the money getting the signs printed.
Alexandra wrote: "Hahaha. I think one of the problems with spellcheckers is they do not always pick up a correctly spelled word used in the wrong context. Although Word 7 one does.My friend had an over zealous, po..."
Spelt. ;)
Yeah, I'm just ragging on you ;)I do have a habit though of championing the "less-preferred" alternative when there are multiple ways of spelling a word. And I do love T-form verbs - spelt, smelt, felt, spilt, spilt, spoilt, learnt, burnt, dreamt, leapt, leant, crept...
English, we are always being told, is a continuously evolving language that is enriched by the ways in which it is used. yet there are so many "rules" that boil down to "because somebody says so", and that I think, should be resisted.
Now somebody has probably already hit the reply button to complain that I put a comma outside a closing quote, and that's *wrong* because commas must always be inside quotes. But why? It's not logical. In fact it's not even correct for those of us that live outside America. That "rule" only exists because some nineteenth century printer kept breaking the squiggle off his commas and so decided to swap the characters around. It makes absolutely no sense in the 21st century to punctuate illogically just because someone broke a bit of metal 200 years ago.
I think there was a discussion a while back about punctuation inside quotes. Personally I was taught it goes INSIDE the little squiggles and it looks weird to me outside.Looking at your list of T-verbs funnily enough I would say smelt is what you do to metal but spilt, spoilt, learnt, burnt, dreamt, leapt and crept are correct. How odd is that:)
I got lots of wiggly red lines of shame when I typed those.
And yet for any other separator (brackets for example), -- not (for example,) -- you would put the comma in the logical place. So why not with quotes?Smelt is more often said than written these days -- he who smelt it dealt it and so on. If you want to say smelled, you can easily argue you should also say dealed...
Wiggly red lines of shame are only someone else going "Because I said so".
And spelt is a kind of high protein wheat.
Many words are homonyms, but they seem to cope... :)
Adam wrote: "A good commentary on commonly used bad grammar in public is Eats, Roots and Leaves, not to be confused with the better known Eats, Shoots & Leaves: The Zero Tolerance Approach to Punctuation."It's a good book, but a year or two ago, it was pointed out in a national newspaper that the correct title should be: ate, shot, and left. Even the experts get it wrong!
Ignite wrote: "It's the feral apostrophe that raises my blood pressure. People will, even in printed signs, put one in a plural. MOT's, CD's, DVD's even the 1980's. Whip 'em out! They're plurals, not possessi..."I'm guilty of this!
I'm terrible at grammar but I hate reading a book with bad grammar ~(I'm such a hypocrite). If I was to release a book though I would have someone else read over it purely to correct grammar and then someone to proof read it after that. Any published work should not be badly written
Reading some of the posts in here really baffle me I don't get gramamr.
Adam wrote: "R.M.F wrote: "It's a good book, but a year or two ago, it was pointed out in a national newspaper that the correct title should be: ate, shot, and left. Even the experts get it wrong! "Actually, ..."
If it were up to me, the Australians wouldn't be allowed to breed! :)
Back on topic: I read an article that the semi-colon is dying out in favour of the comma. Is anybody gnashing their teeth over this prospect, or is this good news?
I have no idea when a semi-colon should be used
(or indeed, a full stop, comma, or colon).Remembered my full stop that time.
I don't often use a semicolon myself. I tend to start a new sentence - like that! However, teeth are gnashed here when 'sentences' are strung together with commas. When an author starts on a new tack but just links it to the previous sentence with a comma I want to throw things. Buses. Big rocks.
Jud (Disney Diva) wrote: "I have no idea when a semi-colon should be used"A statement of that kind should result in a lifetime ban from this group! :)
R.M.F wrote: "Jud (Disney Diva) wrote: "I have no idea when a semi-colon should be used"A statement of that kind should result in a lifetime ban from this group! :)"
Thanks Ignite!
I'll have you know, I'm part of the furniture here. Plus I am getting better at my grammar from being here.
Agree with all of the above, but what really gets my goat is when people leave the 'e' in words with an 'ing' ending. Can't they see it looks wrong? I do sort of love the greengrocer's apostrophe. I think it's quite endearing how some people think that whenever there's an 's' on the end of the word, there should be an apostrophe before it. Bless. Or should that be bles's. Or ble's's? It's all so confusing.
My School was Friends' School but I don't know why the apostrophe came after the s. It comes before when a letter is missing i.e. that is = that's
or if it's mine = Judith's
Is that right?
So when does it come after the s?
Because there is more than one Friend. And Friends's would be silly!
Well it's named after the Society of Friends
My school was Stevenage Girls' School. Because there was more than one girl. When I was at said school, we were taught that if in doubt, turn the sentence around and put the apostrophe on the end. ie, the school of friends. This is friends' school. The home of Judith = Judith's home. It works for me anyway!
Some years ago, a friend got cancer of the colon and had to be operated on. By pure coincidence he also used to play Sergeant Colon in our Discworld productions. After the op, he got a nice little note from Terry Pratchett, telling him that from then on he would be known as Sergeant SemiColon.
Tim wrote: "Some years ago, a friend got cancer of the colon and had to be operated on. By pure coincidence he also used to play Sergeant Colon in our Discworld productions. After the op, he got a nice little ..."Attention to detail, that's what it's all about!
Beverley wrote: "My school was Stevenage Girls' School. Because there was more than one girl. When I was at said school, we were taught that if in doubt, turn the sentence around and put the apostrophe on the end..."That just makes my brain hurt
I went to a Grammar school and the large painted sign high on the wall sign had been altered from grammer unfortunately the paint was a slightly darker shade so it looked awful. A note/not worthy old boy is the Chief executive of the NHS. And don't mention Dr Shipman!
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Books mentioned in this topic
The Elements of Style (other topics)Eats, Shoots & Leaves: The Zero Tolerance Approach to Punctuation (other topics)
Arrrghh!!!!
Anyone else have any examples of bad grammar on the loose?