SenoraPostrophe's grammar workshop...

[SenoraPostrophe]

...go on, ask me anything.

'Ise' rhyming with 'lies' I mean - obviously in 'practise' it has the hard ess sound.

Lio: yep. say is almost always transitive, except in exclamations ("I say!")

wk007: thanks.

god I feel important now. it's a heavy weight of responsibility.

I have loads of grammar questions.
Can't think of any at the moment, but will come back when I remember one.

I think the americans use advise for both? Like we use record to mean both record (the noun) and record (the verb)

ooh, that's interesting about the Americans. Maybe that means they were spelt (spelled? Another question!) the same here in the 17th Century (hmmm, prob all sorts of exciting spellings going on at the time).

I get advice and advise but I never, never, never get licence/license and practise/practice.

aghhhhh!

WK007, just tell them this:

In an exam, the answer to a question had been had or had had. Smith, where Jones had had had, had had had had; had had had had the examiner's approval.

(I think I really am a geek)

And learnt and learned.

no one or noone

And I'm not sure how my pedantic concern over use of English sits with my awareness of the fact that language evolves and needs to keep on evolving or esle it will become meaningless.

Practice = noun
Practise = verb

I remember it because of the order of the alphabet: noun comes before verb, alphabetically, and c comes before s (prob sounds a bit convoluted, but it has worked for me for years).

Not explained v well - the two that come first (practice and noun) go together, and so do the ones that come next alphabetically (practise and verb).

nope, just looked it up. The Americans have advice too. there isn't really an excuse.

night night (more of those pesky two words in a row...)

Took me a good few readings to truly get that, so glad I've never had to construct a sentence like that!!!

Lio that's brill! Thank you.

but google has 296,000 instances of "your advise" (with quotes). There are 1,380,000 instances of the correct version - "your advice", which means that nearly 20% of instances of the phrase on the www are wrong. That's a lot.

i have always done what lio does too

thew sun is also alphabetical about where it rises and sets...

Do people from America use practice and practise in a different way or have I just seen some really bad website recently?

why doe's it matter if we right good English and do grammer anyway. as long; As i can txt & somewon can understand, Me?

Please advice me on this question: in case i need to practise,

The had had hads can run on for ever. The other example I know is about the pub called the Coach and Horses. When a new sign was put up, the publican complained that he wanted a bigger space between Coach and "and" and "and" and Horses.

Oh there's a good one of those about prepositions too - a sentence with something like 7 prepositions in a row, something to do with a book about Australia so that part of it is 'on down under'. Anybody know this?

Masterclass on 'shall' and 'will' please. I was taught (about a hundred years ago) that I and we go with shall, and for everybody else it's will. Is that right?

shall and will is one of my favourite grammatical conundra.

traditionally, I shall, you will and he/she will all express the simple future. Eg. "it will rain tomorrow.". But I will, you shall and he/she shall suggest something more - wilfullness or a promise or command. So "I will get it" suggests determination, and "you shall go to the ball" is a promise and not a prediction.

but almost nobody knows this any more, and anyway these rules were made up by Victorian grammarians with bugger all to do. a bit like the split infinitive.

I think I would have been very happy being a Victorian pedant.

Tell me,please, whether it is OK or not to end a sentence with a preposition, e.g.: "Where are you going to?"

it is traditional that we who are trained as engineers cannot spell, use grammar correctly, or punctuate.

And we mix up our sentences and split infinitives all the time.

(what IS a split infinitive?)

it's the knickerbockers isn't it?