To expect people not to use the word hung when they mean hanged.

[cushioncover]

Ok, I know IABU, and I'm no grammar queen myself but I've read this 4 times today and I just had to rant about it! There!

Where did "should of" come from all of a sudden? I'd never seen it up until about a decade ago and now suddenly all kinds of people are using it. Before long, people will be claiming it's "right" because it's in "common use" (another bugbear of mine).

I've recently been on Facebook and was shocked by the general paucity of good grammar and spelling. I felt like joining the 'I judge you when you use poor grammar' group but felt it might come across as rather unfriendly!

Ooo, is there really an 'I judge you when you use bad grammar' group on facebook?

I use far too many exclamation marks!!!
I'm trying to cut down but it's not easy

dh is shouting at me from the safety of the sofa. His contributions are:

a sign at Streatham Megabowl - Wet Pain't
outside a hairdressing salon - "haircut" for £5
"My Grandfather was literally catapulted onto the throne" - a gem from Prince Edward

alternate/alternative

and many more .
I tell him he should sign up to MN, but I think he might be afraid.

YABU. Who cares?

Spink: outside a hairdressing salon - "haircut" for £5

Eh? What's wrong there?

Ignored again - what a surprise. I take it no knows the answer to my query about New year then?

saltire - "New Year's" always sounds like an American coinage to me.

If it is a "haircut" rather than just a haircut, what exactly is it...

Oh, I see, yes - like a greengrocer I saw selling best "carrots" and new "potatoes".

SueW, they got it both right and wrong, very strange
Chickhick - we do, which is why we have a thread dicussing it

or should that be we "do"?

In what context cushioncover?

Even in the context of execution, wasn't the sentence "to be hung by the neck until dead"?

Cafe in my town has sign saying something like:

'Wide range of "fresh" sandwiches available,'

which I take to mean 'so-called fresh but actually just this side of salmonella poisoning'.

Sorry, but a comma before 'and' can be perfectly correct, as long it's introducing a new subject and the sentence wouldn't make sense otherwise. Sometimes people who don't write well are actually too hamstrung by 'the rules' to understand that breaking the rules is acceptable in certain circumstances. Ditto using 'and' at the beginning of a sentence or paragraph, which is a matter of writing style rather than correct/incorrect grammar - ok, you wouldn't do it in a formal letter, but you might in a novel.

And (!) on the point about latin plurals: I did a degree in Latin and I would never dream of using the plural 'fora'. 'Forum' been adopted into the language as an English word and should be 'pluralised' accordingly. Using 'fora' is pretentious IMO, it means you're just trying to show off that you know it's originally a Latin word.

Ooh, just read this back and I sound really grumpy, sorry. FWIW, genuine grammatical errors annoy me as much as everyone else on here. My current annoyance (though stylistic, not actually an error) is the overuse of 'tragedy' in the media, to the extent that it's become totally devalued - it's a 'tragedy' when thousands of people die in a disaster; it's not a 'tragedy' when someone's cat gets run over.

But what mammama mentioned was commas after and.

This is OK:

• Today I purchased a loaf of bread, some milk and a Fruit Shoot.

This is acceptable, with the "Oxford Comma" in place:

• Today I purchased a loaf of bread, some milk, and a Fruit Shoot.

But this is wrong:

• Today I purchased a loaf of bread, some milk and, a Fruit Shoot.

Threadworm, yes that's how I'd understand it - we're calling them "fresh" but they're not really!

Have just had to write something using sodding Oxford commas before 'and', UD. It feels so unnatural. I had to do go through the whole text doing FIND 'and + space' to find all the places where I'd left them out.

Commas after 'and' are generally wrong, though, except perhaps in the case of an interjected statement... like:

UnquietDad bought some milk, some bread and, shockingly, a Fruit Shoot.

I had to 'do go' through???? WTF? I am writing like a 2-y-o!

Ooops, you're totally right UnquietDad: I misread mammama's comment . I take it all back!! I've just spent so long trying to explain to people whose reports I'm correcting that 'the rules' aren't always right, that I jumped on the opportunity to make this point! (The years of frustration at having my own Oxford commas corrected probably didn't help, either...) Sorry mammama!

What is an Oxford comma?
Is it a highly educated comma that cycles everywhere?

SueW, maybe they should have had a Pedants' checkout