Correct use of the abbreviation for etcetera…

[Negligence1]

Mainly lighthearted.
I know I’m being pernickety, but (and this does annoy me) more often than not, posters on Mumsnet use the abbreviation ect. for etcetera. This is incorrect, as the only correct abbreviation for etcetera is etc.

Yes ect. is an abbreviation, but not for etcetera. It is an abbreviation for Electroconvulsive Therapy, which is when health professionals pass an electrical current through your brain, to treat severe depression, mania among other things.

Well, that’s another 2 minutes of my life I won’t get back!
(sits back and waits for pile on)🤣🤣

As any fool kno...
And those wanting this in pedants corner, what are the three dots above called?!

I think people do know but they don't notice.

A little like lose not loose weight. A very common error, but also sufficiently well know in its correct form to not assume people need a thread to educate them about it.

Surely all the mistakes mean we do need a thread pointing it out! Also a generic thread seems kinder than picking people up on it individually, so not a bad idea at all.

Or maybe just find one of the existing threads e.g.

Etc and ect www.mumsnet.com/Talk/pedants_corner/5130258-etc-and-ect

While we're on this one, somewhere along the convoluted road of my very poor education, I picked up the notion that it should never end a sentence, so should be "etc.," with ore sentence following it. Is this just wrong? Or perhaps outdated? Most of my grasp of the language came from reading very old novels as opposed to actual lessons in school!

YABU to post this in AIBU instead of Pedants' Corner.

It mildly bothers me, but not as much as my own pedantry annoys me.

This has been done to death 😆
My Amazon Fire tablet auto corrects to ect so maybe take it up with Jeff

Have to admit, I didn’t know that one. Thanks for pointing it out, it’s always good to learn something new.👏

Strange, my iPad actually auto corrects ect to etc.

It's because the t in et is more of a glottal stop, so people either mishear it as "eck cetera" or they are abbreviating using Et CeTera. (which, incidentally, works as an abbreviation even if you hear it as eck-cetera or ex-cetera).

Most people don't learn the phrase et cetera with the Latin root, it's something you hear/see/etc in general use, long before you'd gain the knowledge that et means and in Latin.

Less likely to be a typo since more people type on phones than computers, and it would autocorrect because ect is a much less common abbreviation.

Some people have a sort of photographic memory for spellings and can instantly tell if something "looks wrong" (I am one of those people) but not everyone does.

Thanks, I actually brought this up after seeing (yet again) this error on another thread, but didn’t want to specifically pull anyone up.

I know I make mistakes too, as I wasn’t taught grammar at school, but this one really bugs me for some reason.

Any idea why NQT was changed to ECT?

If the information was that basic there wouldn't be so many people getting it wrong.

Same reason they changed it from probationer to NQT!

I'm sitting here in pedants' corner and I appreciate your post 😆

Other than it being an abbreviation for et cetera (two words) but I'll let you off just this once 😉

Yes.

Also, it is a PINCH of salt, not a GRAIN of salt. You take things with a PINCH of salt.

Also, it is a PINCH of salt, not a GRAIN of salt. You take things with a PINCH of salt.

It can be either.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agrainnofsalt

This, with bells on.

Either that or there is a reluctance to upset children by use of the red pen all over their work.

I thought I was pretty good at English at school but only discovered recently that etc is used to described further 'things' and et al should be used to describe 'people'.

It annoys me so much when people write ect. Even my phone puts a red line under it to show it's wrong!!

Good old Al writes a hell of a lot of academic papers

Only if you're a massive busybody who thinks it's your place to educate strangers who are here for discussion and chat not an English lesson.
What tends to happen on the 'loose weight' threads, is the OP will get multiple responses spelling it 'lose'. I figure that anyone up for being 'educated' would think, "hang on, these people are spelling this differently from me, I'll check whether I'm right or they are". I have never seen anyone swap mid thread from loose to lose, indicating they don't do that, so are not especially interested in learning about SPAG. A golden rule should be to not try to educate adult strangers unless they want it.