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.

[mamama]

Ooo tricky one. Wish I were a grammar stormtrooper but I'm afraid I only like spotting mistakes that I know I can fix. I've spent too long thinking about this and have confused myself. Now I can only sit on the fence and hope that someone comes along soon to tell us which is correct. Was leaning slightly towards Mrs B & her fab explanation but Jura's 'sounds' right. Oh dear Does anyone have the Ladybird book of Spelling & grammar? That is my preferred text when it comes to these things.

[MrsBadger]

Technically right but sounds so wrong because of the 'all of them have, some of them have, none of them have' progression...
(will be consulting OED tomorrow)

[TheHighwayCod]

toady in court


"two dauters at UNiversity"

[MrsBadger]

I meant jura was technically correct.

[porpoise]

Definitely none with a singular verb.

[LittleWonder]

Eats Shoots and Leaves, anyone?

My Yr 7 DS came home with English that had been CORRECTED by his teacher, she crossed out his "children's"
and changed it to "childrens'"

I had to imbibe several glasses of wine rather swiftly.

[Tinker]

Saw letter issued today by a govt dept to a big, big firm of accountants with the majority of the address in lower case. I froze.

[hatwoman]

cod is "two dauters at UNiversity" from a court document? if so it makes me feel better. at least everyone else is surrounded my incompetence and sloppiness. I learnt today that 63-sentence woman had such difficulty producing her last document that she started making noises about bringing a grievence against her boss. how does that work? you're so crap that your boss has to return your work to you umpteen times and it's your bosses fault? not sure she's going to like what I wrote. but just let her try. I'll take on the lot of yers. union as well. I'll make it a crusade for decent standards. I'll make my name mud amongst the sloppy ones and one day they'll thank me. cue damn busters music...

[hatwoman]

and btw don;t you love the fact that there's a typo in this thread title ?

[LittleWonder]

hm hm, Hatty - it's grievance........

[drosophila]

I know someone (Tinker you will like this) who wrote a letter which had several references to premises e.g 'I inspected the premises and found that the premises was x or y' or 'I entered the premises at 13.00hrs'. I don't think he was familiar with spell check and when it offered him an alternative for his misspelled version of 'premises' he accepted it. The alternative given was 'penises'. He sent it out without noticing. A phone call at a later stage alerted him to his error.

[LittleWonder]

Trust you are not grieving about grievance Hatty
Have checked the title for typo, so it's your turn to point it out to me because I cannot see it - I believe the apostrophe is correctly placed?!

[hatwoman]

well really it should say "join me in a grumble" or "join me in grumbling". point taken about the complaint. and before you start I don;t do capitals on mn and I can't be bothered to change my semi-colons into apostrophes

[LittleWonder]

Cool!

[mamama]

LOL drosophila! Why don't people read what they have written before allowing others to see it?!

[Chandra]

Answering the question that names the thread, I would call myself a hypocrite if I answered yes . [But my writing skills in my native language are inmaculate }

However, I can contribute to discussion with a little example. I once was handed in an essay that was 6 pages long and it didn't had a single punctuation sign in it, it was just a 6 pages long sentence, and... it was from a 3rd year university student.

[Katymac]

I am teaching my staff at the same time as teaching my 8yo

THERE is like here & refer to place

THEY'RE is they are and ' replaces a letter

THEIR is the other one & is belonging to

HEAR is what you do with your ear

WHERE is like there & here

WE'RE is we are and ' replaces a letter

WERE is the past tense of we are = we were

WEAR is worn (like your ear)

This seems to be understood (aren't I a cow)

[fortyplus]

I was going to say that nobody had mentioned split infinitives yet, but then I saw that jura has beaten me to it. HUMPH!

How to really wind someone up

[AtterySquash]

I have so enjoyed reading this - am glad I am not alone in my total disbelief at the general standard of written English.

Some second year degree students once complained en masse that I had graded their projects too harshly: I'd marked them down for spelling mistakes and the fact that in many cases their grasp of written English (it was their first language) was so poor I couldn't understand WTF they were on about.

[somethingunderthebedisdrooling]

I would like too tell you that i want too choke to who get their 'too' and 'to' mixed up.

[Ellbell]

Received an email from a 2nd-year university student today which said: 'I thort the website had changed'.

Plip

Plop

Plip

Plop

[mamama]

Ellbell, just cannot believe that actually happened

[ghosty]

When people say that 'English changes all the time' I always wonder about something? Do the French and Spanish and Germans have this problem with their younger generations? It is a genuine question so if there are any 'forriners' out there .......

I am always scared to post on these pedant threads as I don't want to make mistakes . I am a victim of crap 1970s teaching and had no education in English grammar . It wasn't until I started learning languages at the age of 11 that I began to know my own language. As a trainee teacher I had to swot up on English grammar but it wasn't until my first year of teaching, when I produced the worst written reports my HOD had ever seen (her words) that I really had to work on it. I am now not too bad but by no means perfect.

I also had to learn my times tables in my first year of teaching . I was at University for 4 years to get a degree

Anyway, you'll like this one. I got a newsletter from DD's creche today .... "I would like to take this opportunity to thank ....." I hate that because it sounds as if she would like to thank xxx but won't ...
"Our Committee ARE run by parents .... " and "The management committee have attended .... "

[Freckle]

Well, I'm over 40 and was educated in a grammar school. Most of my grammar was absorbed through reading and learning foreign languages. I don't remember an awful lot of it in my English classes.

I can remember being contacted at home one evening by a colleague of my secretary at work. She wanted to know why I was "being such a bitch to X". Rather bemused (and not a little angry) I tried to get out of her what the complaint was about. Apparently it was because I kept returning work to the secretary with errors circled in red. I did point out that, if she hadn't made the mistakes in the first place, I wouldn't have had to return the work and, as it is my signature at the end of the letters, I did not want my clients thinking I was thick as pig shit.

Most lawyers are dreadful at spelling and grammar and I didn't want to follow the trend. I have to say that dh does .