Grammar Gaffes

[SoupDragon]

Spotted in Tescos this morning "Please note that the products on this shelf has been discontinued"

That's right though (except it's spelt Huntington's)- it is called Huntington's disease because it's named after the person who first described it.

Superdrug this morning have a sign which reads: "Childrens toys at reduced price's". Urgh!

I suppose they were doing two grammar gaffes for the price of one or something ...

Not quite a grammar gaffe, but along the same lines.

My eldest daughter has just started high school and I am very interested in her school work / homework.

I was looking through one of her maths books the other night, just checking to see whether I could remember any of it - amazing how quickly it comes back, even simple things like prime factors, etc.

Anyway, I use figures in my typing at work (invoices, etc.) and if I have to use "thousands" I use a comma to break up the thousands, i.e.

£10,000.00

In my daughter's book (correct use of apostrophe(?) as the book belong to my daughter), it says that in the "old days" thousands used to be separated by a comma but now it is common practice to just use a space, i.e.

£10 000.00

Did that make me feel old.

I might get shouted down here, but I feel that grammar and spelling are two of the things that "younger" people are no longer interested in. The way my DD (nearly 12) writes e-mails, she uses shortened words like she does when she texts on her phone - but I can't even think of an example because whether I am e-mailing, typing a proper letter or texting on my phone, I never use shortened versions for words. So someones e-mail/text message would be 2 lines long and mine ends up being about 20 lines long but I just can't shorten words (although obviously I can "proper words" like can't, wouldn't (as I have used in this message).

Bumblelion - I think that is bad - how are we supposed to know whether it should have a comma or there a number missing? To me it's just indicative of a slackening of standards in schools today.

Regarding the spacing when writing numbers, the standard mark-up when indicating spacing (for publishing) was to use a thin space rather than a full space (i.e. a letter width space). If this is done correctly then one wouldn't suspect a missing number.

I am becoming more pedantic by the day and feel the label "sad" to be appropriate for me!

Grammar is important to me (though I do make mistakes!), but I'm equally fascinated by the new waves of language use--this business of abreviating everything in texts & e-mails that bumblelion describes. I admire that economy of expression even if it's "wrong."

I guess this is the right thread to ask this grammar question I've faced twice today:

I'm a friend of your mum.
or
I'm a friend of you mum's.

When speaking I always say "friend of you mum's" but when I write it, I start to feel uncertain. Which is correct?

Surely it is "a friend of your mum" as the alternative would mean "a friend of your mum's something", i.e. the apostrophe being used to indicate possession.

I think you can say either "a friend of your mum" or "a friend of your mum's" because "of" in this instance isn't really posessive. You can say "A bag of Rita's" but not "A bag of Rita". I'd always say and write "a friend of your mum's" anyway.

I like the thread title that's appeared today: "Fruit Flys Everywhere". There was I thinking fruit was inanimate - perhaps someone's throwing it at their dh!

ks!

right pair of comedians you to!

Tracyp & ks

Oh No! to? TWO! also sorry TracEyp

And you get a great deal if you're a Kiwi ...

message withdrawn

Oh yes, a real peach of an airline. Plenty of available dates.

Oh, who gives a fig.

I think I'd better stop now though before everyone starts throwing fruit at me ...

God, what a lemon.

And I'll bet the air hostess is called hazel ...