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)

Also, If I Were a Carpenter (Four Tops).

Can I add a pet hate?

I am seeing some friends for a catch-up. I met her at the pick-up point. She came up with a withering putdown. Not sure if those are grammatically correct, but they don't bother me. But I hate it when these are then used as verbs, e.g. "I am going to catch-up (or catchup) with some old friends." Can't think of a better example, but has anyone else noticed this usage?

she coule be saying I am going to catch up" that would be fine, as that is to catch up as a verb. it's then made into a noun by hyphenation. catch-up.

i think that catch-up is the more modern term, derived from to catch up.

pick-up point is also derived. you pick up someone (following the hanging preposition rule you can't pick someone up...)

i've just tried to read the article on the Guardian's House Style.

Bloody hell!
why don't we just translate "house style" into "how to get the english language wrong annoy all pendants everywhere"?

why do they think it's okay to put addendums as the plural of addendum? it's addenda!
and stadium > stadia, not stadiums!

god, i hate the Guardian!

I should have been clearer - I mean joining the two words into one when written down.

Nickel - is that pendants as in light-fittings?

Nickelbabe - I prefer "stadiums". "Stadia" is just poncey and I would argue that stadiums has become the established plural.

Newspaper house styles are geared towards the reading age/ability of their target audience. The same goes for vocabulary, sentence and paragraph length etc.
Compare the word/sentence/paragraph length of The Times to those of the Sun. There is actually a formula for working out the readability scores of text - can't remember what it's called.
In some ways it is more difficult to write headlines and stories for a tabloid readership than for that of a more 'serious' newspaper. You have less space and shorter words to convey the gist of a story. It also has to stand out on the news stands.
The Guardian has a specific readership profile so I guess their style is designed to meet most of their preferences. The house style books are aimed at reporters so that every story has a similar and identifiable 'feel'.
It's all about reader figures and making money.
Am a former-sub BTW.

"why do they think it's okay to put addendums as the plural of addendum? it's addenda!
and stadium > stadia, not stadiums!"

Why, though? We are not speaking or writing Latin, and many, many other Latin loanwords have acquired Anglicized endings by analogy with English words - why go to the wall on just these few?

Ha ha! This was just the point I made earlier. I wondered when it would come up. I hate 'stadia', 'addenda' etc. Once a word has been accepted into the language as an English word, it doesn't matter what its original linguistic derivation is; it should be pluralised (if that's a word ) according to the rules of English, not its root language. It's not just about classical derivations, but also modern ones (e.g. I assume most of us wouldn't go into the local Pizza Hut and ask for two 'pizze').

Ooh, just thought of another one, from my previous life working with government departments and having to endure endless political langauge. The use of 'impact' as a transitive verb akin to affect (e.g. 'the recession is going to significantly impact the housing market'). Ugly, ugly, ugly.

'langauge'??

did i really put pendants????

oopsie!!!

because it is

stadia
addenda

there are others that follow.

it's not that anglicized english says "ooh, you must put an s on the end of the word to make it plural"
english has rules to follow. so should we start saying childs instead of children because we no longer say bethren for brothers?
or mans instead of men or womans instead of women? no, we accept that they are the correct plurals and use them - why should stadiums [baulk] become correct because noone could be bothered to learn the correct plurals????

[steps gently off soapbox]

brethren

(fast typing, not crapness)

and, actually, i do believe that we should adopt the language of origin's plurals if we are using those exact words.
if we anglicize it and make it a different word, then that's different.

like with panini - we use the word panini, but it's actually the plural of the word. so techincally, w've anglicized it so we can put paninis as the plural if we've taken panini to be the singular.
although, again, that's a house-style thing - i personally use panino or singular and panini for plural (mainly because i know an anglo-italian girl who had a huge rant about it once (she worked for Costa Coffee and it grated on her soooo much))

Well I'm a pedant to my bones, but I've just been reading an excellent anti-pedantry, pro-evolutionary blessay by Stephen Fry, and I agree with almost every word he writes.

However - and this is reason for my swift namechange - I was recently given a present of a Coco de Mer gift set, and very nice it was too, but nothing cooled the mood more than the misspelt blindfold.

Very good stuff but was amused to see his war cry against pedantry includes the words: 'I saw a graffito...' He's still clearly a pedant at heart, however hard he tries to convince everyone language should be set free.

Yeah-but-no-but automatically turning out a correct usage doesn't make you a pedant - writing to the newspaper because your local launderette washes and dry's does!

reigns of love~!!

oh dear. so bad i can't even make a pun out of it!

yeah, see, Stephen Fry agrees with me - one graffito, 2 graffiti.

oh, yeah, while we're here - media - the plural of medium meaning method of transfer (media used for telly, radio, newspapers, mainly in its plural)
but! apparently, when you're talking people who converse with the beyond, they're mediums...
don't get that (unless it's a deliberate sneer at the fact that they don't actually communicate with the other side)

i used to work for a filter maker, and their reports had media as a singular. used to make me cringe every time.

OP, how long did you spend reading through your first post before you sent it?

My most annoying:

'asda say'
'waitrose do'

They are singular words. Like team. Asda, Waitrose and Team don't qualify for the use of 'they' - but 'it'

As you were.

Great thread. Given the current football fever: recently saw "At all of the Kicks Off" written outside a pub on its blackboard i.e. using kicks off as the plural noun of kick off not as a verb. Do you think that's correct? Or should it be kick offs?

But nickel, it sounds rather like you're insisting language shouldn't change. The plurals children and brethren are quite old, and there are many Anglo-Saxon words which originally had different plurals, which we don't use any more, and they've acquired "s" endings over time. (e.g., iirc - the plural of ship used to be scipu - slightly worried that's Old Icelandic, but I think I'm right).

In general people don't mind about words where they are not aware of the original form, or the originating language, but get very het up about a very small number.

I am slightly playing devil's advocate here - of course there are usages I dislike and that grate on me, but unless they cause communicative ambiguity, I'm willing to accept that in general my gripes are over style, rather than "rules".