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)

oh yes iswym, sorry

Sings - thanks for that. A trailing preposition it is then.

No apostrophe in the possessive its jeezypeeps only an apostrophe of omission in it's = it is.

and of course I posted after only reading page 1.Mea culpa.

You're welcome, oldbutgold. I do agree that the trailing preposition should be avoided if there is an equally viable alternative, as in the examples you quoted.

I hate trailing propositions. Hate them, hate them.

Also hate lions described as 'Lion,' or zebras described as'zebra.'

Can't bear it.

Also whose/ who's

'yorn' for yours

Lion described as lion??
I do hate it when people talk about "breads, meats and cheeses" as to my mind those things are collective nouns anyway, but I think I am probably wrong. Makes me wince internally when I hear it.

Cheese = some cheese, may be one type, may be multiple types
Cheeses = definitely more than one type of cheese.

Unless you can think of a better way to describe how many types of cheese are present.

No that it what I assumed
But I still hate it!
It's poncey
"Breads" ffs

I thought there were lots of animal species where the singular noun is also the collective such as sheep, fish, buffalo, deer etc. Usually preceded by herd of, shoal of etc. I think lion and zebra fall into this category too.

ahh
#didn't know that, i would say 2 zebras etc
oh no, would i?
2 zebra soun ds better
but look at all those zebras

no, it's a pride of lions.
therefore lions is the plural of lion.

it's a herd of zebras, so ...

a shoal of fish, so fish...

like that.

although, i'm sure i've heard a herd of zebra.

Lions and tigers and bears, oh my!

Another former sub-editor checking in to enjoy this thread.

Unfortunately, errors on MN do annoy me, but I usually restrain myself. My pet hate of the moment is the use of local dialect as an excuse for incorrect spelling or grammar. Say it however you like*, but please learn the correct structure of our written language.

*Actually, if you are in a position to influence/educate our children, please say it correctly. "I were", "I aksed" and such like have no place in the classroom IMO.

Also 'pier group' and 'here, here,'

but I think it's rude to correct others' spelling - and I have terrible typj g skills so am in no position to criticise.

I'm not bothered about typos (now should that be typo's because of the missing letters?), which I make all the time (am lazy with complete sentences on here too), but consistent spelling mistakes are grating. A friend lives overseas and has a blog and always writes 'wondering' for 'wandering' (and sadly she does a lot of 'wondering') and it winds me up.

I'm too wimpy kind to correct though

Aah road signs - what about Heavy Plant Crossing?

I have just found this lovely style guide by the Guardian. Should keep a pedant happy for hours....

I haven't gone through all of them, but this style usage caught my eye:

Meat Loaf sings
meatloaf doesn't sing

Curly - what's 'I aksed'?

Why can't people use written dialect forms, Curly, in an informal context?

I think I'm an anti-pedant - trained in English language and linguistics to PhD level, with strong emphasis on historical linguistics/philology, and all it's given me is a hyper-awareness of exceptions to rules, fuzzy grammar, variation and the like.

I got an email from the literacy support teacher at my school today saying that she wanted to 'highlite errors' around the school.

You couldn't fucking make it up.

Aksed is a really old form, as is axed, iirc - derives from Old Kentish, I think.

Ooh fuzzy grammar - I like the sound of that Habbibu. Can you explain what that's all about?