PPDP - Proudly Public Displays of Pedantry

[UnquietDad]

Here's mine - outside school yesterday:

DS (5) comes out of school with small cardboard box with spots on he has made.

"Look, daddy, I made a dice."

"Oh, DS, you made a brilliant die! That's great!"

Run gamut half of knowing looks and half of puzzled stares as we head for the gate.

Tried to teach dd to say 'whom' today on the bus
SHe is 4 and asked what it meant and WHY

Very good UD.[ grin]
You do make me larf.

Demonstrated magnetic attraction and repulsion to mindees today.

I publicly corrected boss of film company last week on incorrect use of the term 'phonetic'

(Being a speech and language therapist, am on terra very firma. Or terra cotta as John Prescott put it.)

Complaining in asda as the till display read "waiting on customer" instead of waiting for customer when the card reader is waiting for you to put your number in.

Walking up to blackboards outside pubs and rubbing out stray apostrophes with my finger. DH walks on ahead and pertends he doesn't know me.

Pretends, obv.

DS2 once outed my pedantry by snootily correcting a friend, saying 'Infinity isn't a number, it's the endless series of numbers."

I think I said something similar at the age of about 7. I didn't have many friends.

Does this count? I frequently get some of my (Dutch) colleagues who are known in the office for peppering their Dutch with English "business bullsh*t" to explain in Dutch what they've just said in English. Cue embarrassed looks and much bluffing. My pedantic side means being anti the use of words-you-don't-really-understand-but-think-sound-good

JaneHH: 1, crap puffed-up colleague who thinks he's God's gift to the company: ZERO

PS Coolyourjets I think your Asda till must have had a Northern computer programmer setting it up - iirc in the north you can wait "on" people (and not just in restaurants )

I have a biro in my bag specifically for crossing out rogue apostrophes. I don't care if they've spent ages designing their sign in MS Word and laminating it - if it's wrong, it's wrong.

This week's was the correction of "Bank Holiday Monday's".

I tried to explain the whole "panino/panino" thing from last week to dh. He told me never to say that outside the house or it's divorce!

The other week I took out my trusty biro and altered the word "capitol" to "capital" on a poster in the local pub.

I am very proud of my work, you can't even tell, it just looks like they got the word right in the first place.

I am very impressed with all this proactive pedantry ...

The best I can think of is that the other day I pointed out to the school secretary that there shouldn't be an apostrophe in TAs (it was written: TA's) at which point she smiled knowingly and told me that the Head had produced that memo herself

Sorry, mentioned this on another thread, but I'm still proud of it.
Boss: "I'm sick of your pedanticism."
Me: "I think you mean pedantry."

I can just imagine the tone of "I think you'll find..."

rofl

My mum has a broken pair of scissors and heaven forbid anyone asks her for scissors....

("I think you mean", obviously, not "I think you'll find" - gah! the shame of not being able to copy properly on a pedanticism pendant pedantry thread!!!!)

I sent back the school prospectus to head with errors highlighted.

LOL moondog!

Ahem [proud emoticon]: my children, aged 4 and 3, only EVER say DIE (for the sg of DICE, of course, not just for the sheer pleasure of it).

[embarrassed whisper] erm, anyone got any ideas how to teach a 4-year-old to say "the book (that) we read yesterday" rather than "the book what we read yesterday" , [teeth-on-edge emoticon]? All attempts so far have spectacularly failed:

DD: Let's finish the book what we read yesterday
DM: The book THAT we read yesterday, darling
DD: Yes, THAT book, what we read yesterday
DM: Gah!

We've had that same mistake (that/what) - just repeating the right version is the only way to go! (It doesn't help that MIL gets it wrong too... grrrr.)

Walking into a shopping centre recently, I had to bring to everyone's attention a huge sign outside that said "You'll love whats inside".

"Tell me more!" I yelled. "Are they boxes of whats or bags of whats, or are you selling them loose? And how much are those whats?"

Hundreds of shoppers stopped to gape, and soon an important man came running out wringing his hands. "You're absolutely right, Roxy. That sign lacks the possessive apostrophe. We'll have it torn down immediately and replaced at huge expense."

(No, he didn't really, because I actually kept my thoughts to myself rather than share them with the public. But that's what would have happened if I had spoken up.)

I am longing to deface the huge, professionally-produced signboards I've seen on several sites for new flats in Sheffield, which say:

LAND AQUIRED BY...