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.

[Swedes2Turnips1]

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.

[Threadworm]

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

[My2Weegirls]

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

[willow]

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

[lljkk]

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.