Have you pedants seen this blog post?

[MmeLindt]

I know that you will really enjoy this letter.

"If you find yourself using a word of whose meaning you are unsure, do look it up in the dictionary. When we get a word wrong it is embarrassing. It demeans us as professional writers and shakes our readers? confidence in us. In recent weeks we have confused endocrinology ? the study of the body?s endocrine system ? with dendrochronology, which is the study of dating trees.

More embarrassing still, we accused the eminent broadcaster Sir David Attenborough of being a naturist ? someone who chooses not to wear clothes ? when in fact he is a naturalist; and during a story about a coach crash in Paris the nationality of the driver changed from Austrian to Australian. Homogenous and homogeneous are not interchangeable and their respective meanings should be studied in the dictionary."

Can I adopt him as my Grandfather?

That's what happens when you sack all the subs. Heffer should take it up with the Barclays. (Although he's quite right, people shouldn't write copy so badly.)

I wondered about that, Edam. My Dad was a compositor and he used to talk about the proofreading he did (and how often he had to correct terrible grammar).

I rather love him.
Except I also take issue with the split infinitives thing; and his sentence "Bacteria is plural" - which is just Wrong, so very wrong. I know what he means of course - but bacteria, being the plural of the noun bacterium, are, not is.

And he's wrong about impacted as well - he should check out the medical term "impacted faeces".

Still, it was a good rant - can we have him as our Mascot?

It's basic stuff too. Mistakes that shouldn't be made by people who are paid to write.
It did make me smile though and I don't claim to be a pedant.

We should have him on MN for a webchat.

Nothing like a good rant, particularly a well-written one.

Thumbwitch
Could you explain the split infinitive to me? I am never sure what it means.

Split infinitive is to stick an adverb between "to" and "verb" (the 'to' signifies the infinitive in English)

The most famous example is in Star TRek - "These are the Voyages of the Starship Enterprise - its mission, to boldly go [wherever it is that it goes]"

Frankly I think it sounds better as 'to boldly go' than any other format. More descriptive, more emotive.

The reason that it was pronounced in the 18th century or so that Thou Shalt Not Split An Infinitive was, IIRC, that you didn't split infinitives in Latin. Of course, you couldn't split infinitives in Latin, which is in any event a very different sort of language from English, so this was an argument in danger of disappearing up its own fundament from the beginning.

Hence I have no problem at all with splitting infinitives, although I would avoid it if writing for a large audience many of whom might dislike it.

I seem to recall posting on the subject of infinitive splitting and obscure Classics scholars last week.

Now, I'm only a wannabe pedant (crappy suburban comp and third division Polytechnic education you see) but nonetheless I shall continue to impishly split infinitives whether the intended audience likes it or not. In fact, I see it as my duty to mischievously irritate such souls....

LOL RG2!

See? so much more descriptive of the action "to mischievously irritate" (and "to impishly split") than "mischievously to irritate", or "to irritate mischievously".

Thou shalt split an infinitive if thou feelst like it, forsooth.

The 'bacteria' sentence is fine, isn't it? The verb is singular because the sentence means " The word 'bacteria' is plural."

The original sentence could have been phrased more clearly, but I don't think it is incorrect.

He should have said "the word bacteria is plural" or "Bacteria is a plural noun", not "Bacteria is plural", IMO. He has placed bacteria as the subject of the sentence and bacteria as a noun is a plural noun. Perhaps I am being uber-pedantic, or perhaps I am wrong - but I wouldn't let it pass if a student wrote it.