Pedants' safe-house

[oldbutgold]

In view of the strong feeling expressed towards inveterate error-spotters (aka passive-aggressive bullies/pedants/twats etc) what about a thread for all the spelling errors/grammatical mistakes seen stricly outside MN in RL?
Like journalist Keith Waterhouse who was president of the AAA - campaigned throughout his career for the Abolition of the Abhorrent Apostrophe.
Spotted by self recently:

Ladie's hairdressers (in town)
Childrens' Society (on BBC)
10 items or less (everywhere)

chaos, thank you. you can't ordee from that website, though (that's why i linked that- it's my supplier's website and you can only order through them if you're trade :P )

it's out in July though!

Things are still quiet, thank you for asking, so I'm using the time to put stuff on the website!

Buch "I am also semi-colon/colon illiterate, I tend to use a colon if a full stop would also be possible. Is that right?"

no, it's the other way round - you use a semi-colon to indicate that these two sentences are simialr to each other in subject (or are related in some way).
you use a colon to indicate that the second part of the sentence (or the second clause) explains the first part, or contradicts it.

i'll try to make an example...

The clock ran backwards; it told the time anti-clockwise.

The clock ran backwards: John has put the battery in the wrong way round.

the first sentence is where the two parts could be two separate correct sentences -
The clock ran backwards. It told the time anti-clockwise.

the secodn says that the reason the clock is running backwards is that John put the battery in wrong -
The clock ran backwards because John had put the battery in the wrong way round.

i don't know if this is any help
prepositions

nb I'll bet you can't link to your shop in here. Please can you email me at chaostrulyreigns @ hotmail dot co dot uk - fed up with patronising the big companies. Independant shops need our support.

but you will definitely have to try to get hold of the Punctuation book when it comes out (it's ISBN 9780753419649)

ah, chaos, you're so lovely!

On mumsnet; 'hetrosexual'

have had srse kicked by sub for judgement

And now I know how to use colons: I have never been sure.

yeay! big tick for smallorange!

Does anyone else get irrationally cross when posting on MN that sentences and 'I's are not automatically capitalised.

Or am I just a lazy typist pedant?

yes, chaos, that annoys me, too! i was just thinking that when i typed an email!

(QED, btw)...

Nickelbabe

perfect : has had
imperfect: was having
pluperfect: had had

or more usually in English:

present perfect : has had
past continuous or past progressive: was having
past perfect : had had

In French these three tenses are le passé composé, l'imparfait and le plus-que-parfait. The English translation of these is the perfect, the imperfect and the pluperfect.

I have a question. Why do you see the following:

St James's Park (London),
St James' Park (Newcastle)and
St James Road?

The one I have always wondered about is the apostrophe after abbreviations but I think that has already been answered. I have two boys so I can refer to them as dss or ds's (although this is seen to be outdated). The problem is that dss could be mistaken as dear stepson rather than dear sons. I suppose DSs is an alternative.

What about hyphens or are they seriously old-fashioned?

I have a problem with homophones being used incorrectly but my current bugbear is could of. I correct my dd when she pronounces this incorrectly (much to her annoyance).

Has anyone mentioned the subjunctive yet?

There's a Pet Shop Boy's song (can't remember the title) with the line "If I was you" in it. If it comes on the radio, I find myself shouting "were" loudly at the radio.

Edam, at Uni we did, in fact, use the phrase English English - to distinguish it from Scottish English, which is what most of our students spoke and wrote. Scottish Standard English is very similar to English English, but has several grammatical variants, as well as differences in vocabulary.

On dive/dove - that was the original form in England as well, much as climb had the past tense of clomb. These strong verbs were converted over time into weak verbs, and so changed their preterite form - tellingly, this was after the Mayflower sailed, so the original forms remain in US English, along with others, such as "gotten".

Does anyone remember another ASDA special: "Permanently low prices - Forever"?!!!!!

Curly, I did say "in an informal context", which is what I consider MN to be, and dialect forms do have different spellings of some words. I'd accept the argument that as MN is not a localised site, but has global reach, communicative coherence demands that you should use a standard form if you wish to be fully understood by all readers.

You said "What hope have our children got if they are being taught one thing and hearing another?" - well, that's something that can be thought about in some more detail. I think it's fine for children to hear and use dialect forms at home, while learning their national standard form at school - they will grow up bi-dialectal, and with appropriate support know which form to use in which context.

The problem with the rules that people write into papers about is that they are not set in stone, and often not fully understood by the people who write in to complain. Issues of style are one thing - grammatical "correctness" is a little more nebulous. For example, what would you make of the phrase "My hair needs cut"?

I just saw this on another forum:
"It peaked my interest"

Sorry chaos - but they're independent shops, not independant. I just couldn't stop myself .

Habbibu that's a bit like when Americans say 'I could care less' where BrE is 'I couldn't care less'.

I like dialect differences and find American English bashing quite boring, but to me 'I could care less' doesn't seem to make sense in the context. I shall have to accept it is idiomatic and get over it.

Yes, that's quite peculiar, unless there's a huge elision on the end of something like "but it would take a huge effort of will, and I need that energy for things like breathing". Which I doubt.

Gah! I realised that I'd spelt it wrong the second I read nb's email. I am hanging my head in shame.

Please tell me the difference - been a long time since I was at school.

While (whilst?) we're on the subject: I know when to use past/passed, may be/maybe, among/amongst (I think ) but am unable to articulate why.

Please help a semi-ex-communicated peasant.

singsinthebath - it's the same with Midge Ure's song - it's IF I WERE a sodding solider!!!!!

although, i didn't learn this tense until I was doing A-level german and suddenly a lot of stuff made sense!

I forgive chaos's independant (that took me twice to type it wrong!) because she lvoes me.

she loves me, even......

usage is quite hard for those things - you use past when it's a noun/adjective (the past tense, the past, etc) and passed is the past tense of pass.

maybe is a noun, may be is a verb.

among/amongst, i'm not sure why.

independent is because it's a latinate word and that's just the way it goes!!

i know that dependent can be dependant, again both latinate words, but both correct.
i tend to use dependant when it's talking about a noun (ie your children are your dependants) and dependent when it's referrign to a state (the weather is dependent on the wind direction or something)

independent is only ever a state (you parents can be independent of you, but can never be your independents), so that works there.

i don't knwo if these are proper rules or if they're made up by me, but they do make sense.

that verb/noun thing works for advice/advise, practise/practice and other words like that.

(the s goes with the verb)(imagine realise/realize and think of advise and practise as an -ise word!)
(in the old days, advise was spelled advize)