eats shoots and leaves

[hugoboss]

Does anyone else get really annoyed with other people's punctuation? like "Apple's and Pear's and Sammys Grocerys." Is it just me, or are more and more people less interested in getting the punctuation correct?

What are your least favourite punctuation/grammatical errors? 

[Octavius]

know - their're morer important things' to get annoyed about 

[Ewood27]

With the dumbed-down education system churning out more and more illiterates, I feel it's up to those of us who do know about grammar and spelling to do our best to maintain some sort of standard.  If we don't bother, there's nobody else to do it, and pretty soon nobody won't kno nuffin' 'bout gramer n spelin n that stuff, like, who cares?  An' wot you lookin' at?

 

My unfavourites?  How long have you got?

[Octavius]

Don't go givin me no evos!

[Quizmonster]

I've seen 'could of' and 'should of' - rather than 'could've' and 'should've' - in print more than once...and not in mickey-taking situations either. Utter stupidity and laziness, of course, but probably destined to become the norm.

[mrs.pudding]

people who talk about 'drawring' and 'jewlery' - not grammar I know but it helps to get these things off of my chest!

[Miss Zippy]

Yep it gets my goat too. I can't believe how many supposedly well educated people I know still get basics like  'your'  and 'you're'  wrong. 

[Octavius]

I was going to say that one Miss Zippy - it drives me up the wall! As well as their, there, they're. 

[Clanad]

Roger that...

[Solarjunkie]

All of the above.........but the one which causes me the most frequent pain is "it's".

Seen recently in Homebase "sorry this product is out of stock, but don't worry, it's on it's way".

The same store apparently tells their staff to choose a locker "for your soul use".

[brachiopod]

It annoys me intensely, too. (Or should that be to or two?)

I hate the excuses that 'language is defined by its users and changes over time' or 'That's not the way we talk so why should we write it like that?'.

They are just that - excuses. Excuses for laziness. Written language evolves slowly - not in the few short years since we have had text messages and all dat bllcks wot it invlvs m8 innit an stuff.

We adapt our spoken language to different situations. We don't 'talk the same' in the pub as we would in a job interview (though sadly, from my experience this is becoming less true), we make an effort and take care in what we are saying. The same should apply in written language which, more often than not, is used for a formal purpose. If your letter is an informal one to a close friend, then yes, slang terms and light-hearted but grammatically-incorrect expressions could be acceptable - but why should all spelling accuracy (with words such as their/there, to/too etc.) go out the window?

[brachiopod]

Rant #2

At my local Strangeways/Morrisdancers supermarket, they re-arranged the checkouts so that customers with just a few purchases used full-sized checkouts with a conveyor belt, instead of the little checkouts with space only to plonk a basket.

In order to alert shoppers of this function, temporary hand written signs were placed at the start of the conveyor, in plastic holders (the sort normally used to hold a menu upright) stating;

"This checkout for customers with 9 items or less"

After a week or so, these were changed to signs printed on a bog standard PC printer (still in the plastic stands) and read;

 '.... with 9 items or fewer'.

Eventually, the official, corporate-branded, full-sized, over-checkout-suspended signs arrived, reading;

'.... with 9 items or less'

The 'menu' signs still remain, stating '...fewer'. On one of them, someone, (a customer I would guess) has crossed out 'fewer' and written 'less' beneath it.

My question -

Should I now amend the incorrect-correction by crossing out 'less' and re-writing 'fewer'? Or should I just get on with my shopping and my life?

[Quizmonster]

Miles, minutes and pounds are all countable nouns in the same way that items are.  Would anyone, therefore, say: "My workplace is fewer than two miles from home, so it takes a taxi fewer than ten minutes to get there and the driver charges fewer than four pounds"? I suspect not! 

There simply are situations where it is now almost acceptable to use the demotic �less' rather than the grammatically-correct �fewer'. The latter became �correct' only in the 18th century in any case.  Prior to that, many writers used �less' where purists now demand �fewer'. 

As time passes, we'll see much more of �less' and much less of �fewer', you may count on it.  As an old-timer, I agree with you, Brachiopod, and still differentiate between them, but I don't complain about people who choose not to... or don't know that they �should'.

It must be remembered, however, that there is a considerable difference - in terms of meaning - between a teacher telling his class: a) "Write fewer funny compositions" as opposed to: b) "Write less funny compositions."  �a' would mean they'd been writing too many of these and should try to cut the quantity down and �b' would mean the pupils were welcome to go on writing them, but the compositions should not be quite as amusing!

[summer]

People don't tknow the difference between your and you're...their/there...too/to/two etc etc

[raindog]

There is a serious problem with the grammar of a lot of people  that stems from a misguided experiment to deal with speech as itwas spoken several years ago. The backlash of this was that already lax standards were seen to be untenable-and for this reason, phonetic grammar became, briefly, acceptable. Incidentally I could present a more than compelling case for a colon after "is it just me" in your original question.

What standard do we want to set ourselves?

[Bert]

I'd like to see raindog's case for a colon.  It would be utterly incorrect in my opinion: the comma is just fine. 

The first paperback edition of "Chocolat" had the "word" "mischievious" in the blurb on the back cover.  (Too many inverted commas?) I thought that was a sad sign of the times.  It was corrected in the second edition.

You learn to accept and expect these types of errors in small ads and local newspapers, but when you see them on video sleeves, in national newpapers and in books, it is really disheartening.

[jocook17]

Oh no Octavius - its 'Evils' as in dirty looks! You were doing so well! ;o)