To be so angry about this stupid English teacher!

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My daughter's just told me how her English teacher has corrected her on her spelling of apostrophe. Not a huge thing to get angry about except that my daughter's spelling it correctly and the teacher keeps telling her to spell it apostrophie! This is her English teacher, how on Earth is she supposed to respect and be inspired by this teacher.

I know it's quite a small this to get annoyed about but it's just really wound me up.

How about this one: I most frequently see Mother's Day written.

I always think Mothers' Day is more correct as it's a day for all mothers.

I got an A in my English Language GCSE in 1992 but there were several grammar rules I didn't learn until I studied French at A-Level and university. Yes, it actually taught me English grammar. Also I wasn't really sure how to use it's/its correctly until I read Eat Shoots and Leaves in my 20s. I knew you didn't put an apostrophe with plurals but wrote things like "The 1960's" until a few years ago, when someone pointed out the superfluous apostrophe.

Then there were some things I learned after I started work! E.g. "To whom I am writing" is more correct in written form than "Who I am writing to".

Not spelling but - on the phone to Virgin (with whom I have been having problems) Salesgirl said 'I know you've wrote in...' I let it go several times, but then couldn't help myself muttering 'written in! I've written in!'' after about the 3rd time. She kept stopping her spiel, then carrying on. It made my teeth itch!
And she was English.

I always think Mothers' Day is more correct as it's a day for all mothers

If you're going to be barbarous and use the American name, then you should defer to its inventor:

"In 1912, Jarvis incorporated her own association, trademarked the white carnation and the phrases “second Sunday in May” and “Mother’s Day”. She was specific about the location of the apostrophe; it was to be a singular possessive, for each family to honour their mother, not a plural possessive commemorating all mothers in the world."

In this country, "Mother's Day" is creeping Americanisation, renaming "Mothering Sunday" (4th Sunday in Lent) rather than adopting the US's second Sunday in May. So there shouldn't be an apostrophe in it at all.

My daughters' primary school classroom had a sign on the cupboard saying 'Stationary'. Presumably they had experienced problems with moving furniture before

I don't like using Mothering Sunday, lest someone should mistake me for a churchy person. I don't much care for the religous origins either, and see Mothers' Day or Mother's Day as more secular, so preferable.

Also the Christian church was very good at hijacking pagan/other long standing festivals and traditions, so there is a rather a history of one thing turning into something quite different.

Is this a joke? ApostrophIe, honestly, an english teacher thinks it is spelt that way?
I would have had to ring the school, just to check witht he teacher that she is actually saying it is spelt that way.

That Romeo and Juliet mistake is unforgivable!

am I being dense, what's the Romeo & Juliet error?

my friend wrote a poem aged about 13 with the word "hoar" (as in frost)in it - and the English teacher said there was no such word. Now, you would think that before declaring there to be no such word, they would look it up to check, then they could make a big thing of it being a very good uncommonly used word, without looking like a pillock themselves.

we get too many notes in reading logs with your/you're confused, we have too many TAs that speak incorrectly so they will write "we was/we done" and we even had notes home saying "please bring your PE kit of Tuesday's and Friday's"

phantom "Wherefore" means "why". It's often confused with "where". "Romeo, Romeo, wherefore art thou Romeo" is Juliet asking why Romeo has the name he does, and (by implication) why he is a Montague and not simply someone Juliet can love without her family disapproving. It's not her wondering where he is. Given the rest of the scene, it's not impossible to construct a meaning in which it makes some vague sort of sense.

The other uses of the word in the same play make the sense more obvious ("Why, how now, kinsman! wherefore storm you so?", "But, wherefore, villain, didst thou kill my cousin?") and in other plays completely clear ("I have of late but wherefore I know not lost all my mirth") but it's an easy enough mistake to make if you aren't familiar with the language.

DD, when small, had to use the word "explode" in a sentence, and wrote "Bombs explode." The teacher said that is wasn't a sentence - which is wrong of course, but what wound me up was the patronising "well tried" after it. The whilst point was that DD was correct but lazy, and had done a half-arsed sentence in an attempt to do the bare minimum of work. The combination of a sketchy grasp of grammar and a poor understanding of DD was not ideal.

Thank you FRiday, I did not know that I must confess, but then again, the only shakespeare I have ever studied was Macbeth in Yr 8 and The merchant of Venice for O level , many many years ago!

It was Merchant of Venice for me too in english literature O level.

Anais, I get phrases like "We done some letters" etc. in dd2's home-school diary. It doesn't bother me at all, because these updates are usually written by the TAs, who are often young and not educated to the same standard as the teachers.

It would bother me if a teacher was making those mistakes, or if they were wrongly correcting the children's work, particularly if they behaved like LeGavrOrf's teacher .

BOF - it should bother you. T.A.s are responsible for teaching groups now. I kid you not "i went to the park" was written by one T.A. in Reception. How are children meant to learn when the adult teaching them models it incorrectly?

Perhaps I would feel differently if dd2 were in mainstream, but she isn't, so the academic side of things isn't an issue for me.

Ah, ok. That makes a difference.

As an LSA (with an English and History Degree), this month I have suffered 'vaccum', 'seperate', 'buddism' and 'plastacine'. Also had to sit through a cookery teacher insisting a zucchini is an aubergine, and an English teacher telling the kids John Wayne was very small and insisted on camera angles to make him look tall.

I sit and rock in the corner.

BOF DS (6) is in special school. He is autistic so if someone in authority corrects him wrongly or writes, "we done / we was" on the board he might adopt those phrases for life! It's so hard to get him out of habits...

It's taken two years to make DD stop speaking that way after she went to secondary and picked it up from her new friends

I once did a creative writing course and one of the people read out their piece which contained the word 'puce'. The teacher was highly dubious that it was a real word.

..I also did an art class once and the teacher didn't know what colour ultramarine was..

Forgot to say, it didn't bother me at nursery age or in Reception. His achievement book was full of "we done" but I was meh about it because he didn't see it and they were LSAs who were brilliant at developing his social skills.

Now it's the person who is teaching the class. It's very tricky because in my county a lot of people don't know that it is incorrect and I'm going to feel a right twat if I point it out.

persimmon.

I was once told by the LSA in Charge of Art Supplies that there was no black paint so I should mix it up from other colours, the way you'd mix red and yellow if no orange was available.

English teacher telling the kids John Wayne was very small and insisted on camera angles to make him look tall.

How did John Wayne come up in the lesson? Wayne's reputation is fascinating: he died a genre actor famous for being a right-wing whackjob, but now several of his films (The Searchers, in particular, and The Shootist) are looking better and better.

We went to Parents Evening for DS, and the teacher had written on the front of every child's book: Grammer and Spellings.