anyone want to join me in grumble about the quality of other people's written work

[hatwoman]

quality of language, analysis, strategy all up for discussion. Blaming A levels, universities, your own work-place training all invited. Awarding of points out of 10 particularly enouraged. I had to spend all sodding day today reading something for publication that I seriously would give about 3/10. just. it was appalling. record sentence (yes I took to counting, it was that bad) was 63 words long. yep. SIXTY-THREE. and, in case you missed it, this is for EXTERNAL PUBLICATION.

My Dad once employed a graduate with a 2:1 from a good university. Her first report was full of mistakes - and she constantly used 'of' instead of 'have', ie., "they could of made some improvements." When he pointed this out to her she looked completely blank - and continued to do it all the time she worked for him.

According to my ex-boss, who generally only hired Oxbridge graduates (but I slipped through anyway) inability to write clearly reflects an inability to think clearly and I have to say to some extent I do agree with him.

My ds is a PhD student in America and has been doing some teaching. He says the level of written work from students is dreadful. Someone even made an official complaint that his marking was 'too British' but luckily the university was on ds's side.

My brother marks Law exam scripts, he often remarks that not only is their handle on Law bad, but their English is worse........ I find it scary that ds's nursery girls can't spell (the new ones are much better.) I wan't taught grammer (think I missed that class) but can generally tell if something is punctuated correctly or not because I read so much as a child.....

Saadia, I taught in a state school and, from what somethingunderthebedisdrooling said, it sounds as though a lot of primary teachers work hard on their own grammar before teaching it. Hope so anyway, would hate to think I was the only one! WigWamBam, at the teacher thinking it is acceptable for the TA to use apostrophes incorrectly - it's never to early to set a good example.

LOL @ 'too British', suedonim . When I first began teaching in the US, one of the parents mentioned that her daughter thought I was yelling at her. The parents were surprised & said I seemed very calm and no-one else had heard me should. It was decided that my 'British' accent was rather harsh for their dd!

Now feeling very embarrassed that I left out the 'can' and confused people!

Must've been BEAUSE I was in a bit of a hurry tee hee

"How many people need to produce gramatically correct English on a day-to-day basis? Almost all my written communication at work is by email, where standards are very low... But otherwise it is not particularly important at work." I guess it depends what work you're in but I'm talking about a lot worse than a rogue apostrophe. I'm talking sentences that lack verbs, or that have too many verbs; sentences where there is an "it" as a subject of a verb and nothing to indicate what "it" is; sentences containing SIXTY-THREE (did you get that?) words. In this case I can only conclude that the writer has not put any effort into actually thinking about what she has written. And that does matter. a lot. It's all cut and pasted and it's CRAP. harrumph.

The point is that words are there as a means of communicating. Rogue apostropes in casual emails probably don't interfere with the aim of communicating. Stringing words together randomly without actually constructing what I would call a sentence, does - whether it's in an email or an external document. Clarity is all.

Ooh, lovely, a grammar thread!

My other pet peeves, as well as agreeing with most of those here:

"may I take this opportunity" aargghh! Yes, Take It, why don't you? And totally agree with dislike of

"If however you have any questions please do not hesitate to contact me" - no, don't hesitate, wondering whether it's the right thing to do, just be terrifyingly bold and contact me, hey, why don't you?

Lots of people who email me don't seem to know the difference between

there
their
they're

and

your
you're
yore (ok, joking about that one)

and

here
hear

Shocking, all of it

Why were we not taught gramar? I learnt any grammar I know when learning French but I was wondering then, why on earth was I never taught the tenses names for example.
Ask my dh to explain an intransitive verb, or conjunction and interjection and he can explain it straight away. He was taught English in the old fashioned way in India and his spoken English is terrible but he sure knows his grammar like a book!

There is a discussion forum at work and recently someone called for people who use poor grammar and poor spelling to be sacked. Funny thing the poster was 21.

I was taught by some very strict teachers and I still have some blind spots when it comes to grammar but especially spelling. I feel I have been hindered by this mainly because I can become paralysed when I write and get really stuck creatively. Part of me envies these youngsters with their 'so fu*king what attitude'. If one of the advantages of people being less anal about grammar and spelling was increased creativity then that could be a good trade off.

In 50 years it is possible that the knowledge of where apostrophes should go will have died. How do you feel about that?

Ah - my hobby horse!

Dh recently brought home a press release for me to "improve". It was written by a journalist friend of one of his co-directors, and was, quite frankly, appalling.

I made loads of corrections to grammar and general use of language. I am not a journalist and don't even have a degree. However, I had a good education to A'level standard in the days when there were proper standards in education (left school in 1984).

Dh is a university professor and I despair daily when I listen to the tales he tells about the appalling low standards necessary for a student to attain a degree.

Adults who use 'brought' when they mean 'bought'.
Eeeeeeek!
It's like nails on a blackboard.
Having said that - I'm not sure I'm 100% on the less/fewer or split infinitive rules so I could have the same effect on other people.
Like to think I'm quite hot on spelling and apostrophes though.

Ooh yes - I can't stand "brought" for "bought".

Also, I used to have an assistant at work who always said "Have you rang 'so-and-so'" instead of "Have you rung?", and "Should of" instead of "Should have". Used to drive me insane. Worse - her mother was a teacher...

My old office had signs on the toilet doors saying "please leave this toilet in a clean and tidy manner" it irritated me for almost 5 years. Presumably they were talking about leaving the loo in a tidy state rather than making a comment on how I should exit.

pmsl - not office related but that reminds me of Tesco's own brand kiddy toilet wipe things. Apparently it's ok to flush them down the loo singularly.

Oh, oh, I have another one - are instead of our & vice versa. Aaargh!

I just received an e-mail which said:

"Are, yes, fair enough?" What the authour really meant was "Ah, yes. Fair enough!" The first one makes no sense at all. It was written by a well-published university professor

I sometimes do some editorial work for a publishing firm, and the emails I get from them make me pmsl. They are meant to employ people of "graduate calibre" which, in this case, reads "thick as pig shit." It amzes me the amount of people who cannot string a sentence together, or who use text speak when they re supposed to be communicating in a professional manner, like "can u write a peace (yes really!) for XXXX as they are promoting there XXXX"

It makes me want to break things. Now I know my typing isn't the best on here, but none of you pay me money to be able to write coherently!

Someone (singular) pays me.
No-one (singular) pays me.
All of you (plural) pay me.
None of you (plural) pay me.

oh, I'm curmudgeonly today...

feck off