It's 'make do' , not 'make due'?

[oldlaundbooth]

AIBU?

Colleague senior academic associate wrote' We'll make due' in an email

It's 'make do', right?

I have started to pick kids up on
I was sat there/ I am sat there etc

They WILL NOT believe me that there is no such grammatical construction. They have argued their case for weeks

That one grinds my gears as well (along, it has to be said, with a lot of the other examples on here). The explanation I have come up with is that it is a passive construction, ie if someone picked you up and bodily plonked you down and made you sit there, then you were sat ie you are the passive subject of the sitting. Otherwise you are sitting.

DP says 'Jesus wet' instead of 'Jesus wept' EVERY time. He also says 'chipolata sauce' instead of chipotle and many many other things that are no where near correct

"I'm unavailable to take your call."

Dim boss cannot see why this is WRONG despite protracted explanations.

School role instead of roll. How can it possibly be role?

Myself and my friend went to ... You wouldn't say "Myself went to" so how can this possibly be correct?

And I really hate it when people say "nucular". Why, FFS? They can all say "new" and "clear". How hard can it be to run them together?

It drives me mad when I hear people say they've 'woofed' something down instead of 'wolfed' it down! Grrr!

"I'm unavailable to take your call."

Assuming this is a recorded answerphone message, I can't see what's wrong with it?

Should it be 'not able'?

It should be unable to take your call or just unavailable.

The winner of the Mslexia Women's Short Story competition features the phrase "a slither of cabbage."

Uncorrected, it sits there, goading me.

Something inside me died when I read it tbh

I once read an argument that "I was sitting" is also incorrect, as 'sitting' is a transitive verb, so suggests that the speaker is in a constant state of trying to apply arse to chair and never quite getting there.

Therefore, the correct form is, "I was seated."

Thoughts?

That one is discussed quite often in PC, Yvaine.

It's bollocks, is my thoughts.

I was sitting/I was seated- both fine, different contexts.

The person saying it's wrong clearly needs to look up "transitive" before expounding on syntax.

I was sitting - Past continuous
www.verbix.com/webverbix/English/sit.html

Apologies if someone posted this already, I haven't had chance to read all 19 pages of this thread (seemed such a simple question!), but for the 'think' 'thing' debate, the following discusses the history of the phrase, and 'think' came first apparently, whether we like it or not!
grammarist.com/usage/another-think-coming/

Shit - why did I say transitive?

I have a linguistics degree and used to teach A level language

In my defence it was 4am...

Well, 5.

Headline in today's Guardian: "Less than half of students confident their degree will pay for itself"

I instinctively feel that this should be "fewer" as "half of students" can be subdivided down into individual people, but I am not 100% sure.

Thoughts?

Maybe if they'd put "Less than half of all students" it would read less awkwardly?

I think you're right. They have to limit words/ characters in headlines I suppose and I think for that reason grammar sometimes takes a back seat.

Apologies if this has already been moaned about, but one that seems to be everywhere is 'worse' and 'worst' being used interchangeably.

As in ' that's the worse thing that ever happened'

Or

'What's even worst is that he didn't apologise'

Grrrrrr

I LOVE this thread.

I have posted before about my dislike of people saying 'I' when they mean 'me'. And 'myself' makes me want to scream.

My current bugbear is 'pre-order'. Surely just 'order' would do?

And another one - starting paragraphs with "So". Why? It adds nothing, it's three totally superfluous keystrokes.

"Pre-order" is for when you can order on the spot, like in a restaurant, but for some reason order in advance eg if there is a dish for which you need to get them to buy special ingredients. Or if you order a book that isn't yet published or a DVD that's not yet released. The point with the latter being that the company can't immediately fulfil your request so it is pre- ordered before it's available.

On "so", it's just a conversational style of writing isn't it?

back to 'I was sat'

dh has been known ot pick one of the dcs up and put them in the chair and then say - there you are now you can say 'I was sat in the chair by my dad!'

Dh is second language English and he doesn't get it wrong.

Less than half is OK, as is fewer than half. Again, it depends on the subjectivity of the speaker. If we assume s/he is contemplating the "less than" to refer to "half" it's fine, if, however, s/he is referring to "students" then fewer is better.

Less than/fewer crops up often in "grammar mistakes which actually aren't" lists on the web.

Long threads with apposite links in PC!

And another thing; it's barbecue. Not barbeque.

Less than half is OK, as is fewer than half. Again, it depends on the subjectivity of the speaker. If we assume s/he is contemplating the "less than" to refer to "half" it's fine, if, however, s/he is referring to "students" then fewer is better.

Can you expand on that please thenlater? I don't understand the logic I'm afraid. I know that "less than half" can be correct in many situations - eg "I have less than half a glass of milk left" or "I am less than half finished".

However I was concerned specifically about "less than half of students". To me that sounds like only a section of each student, say from his toes to his mid thigh thinks that his degree will pay for itself.

OTOH if we imagine that there are 300 students in the country and only 100 think that their degrees will pay for themselves, do those 100 students not constitute "fewer than half of students" (but less than half of the student body)?