Do you mostly think Pedants' corner is petty, except for just one or two things...

[lljkk]

And if so, what can't you ignore?

I don't care about fewer vs. less or where the apostrophe belongs (if at all) or their/they're/there confusion... Most mistakes are typos, anyway, right? Who cares?

But 2 things get up my nose quite quickly:

1. Few being used to to refer to a large number, like newspaper headlines saying "Majority of population will be obese in just a few years" -- the prediction was about obesity in the year 2050, since when is 42 years in the future only "a few" years away?

2. Data being used as a singular by people with science backgrounds. I've given up on journalists, but surely if you're worked in a laboratory or with GB of information on a computer, you know it's a plural word? "The data are interesting" -- not "The data is fascinating and tells us..."

Thank you for letting me get that off my chest.

Do you mean you think pedants corner is petty unless it is being pedantic about your things?

The only problem with saying: "The data are interesting" is that it sounds like you come from Somerset. I prefer to use statistics or findings.

Why Somerset? Are they all very precise about language there?

agree with your first point - though i suppose in the grand scheme of things a 42 would be a few (or miniscule) years in the earths lifetime...

to me data are just a set of characters - it's not until you actually collate, analyse, interpret and present them that you can really comment on the findings/results etc

I thought the idea was that it would be a useful place for people to explain punctuation. A sort of MN reference section?

Sometimes people on these types of threads are just whinging about the same things over and over, not helpfully explaining to the curious but on a mission to reform the world and moan about people who won't listen or don't care or don't reform their ways.
....Slinks back to own hidey hole.