Tuesday, 30 September 2008
Random Factor (like a tractor)
I've previously documented my dislike of the current trend for misusing the word 'random'. I was pleased, therefore, to hear Matt Forde vent on this topic on the Jon Richardson Podcast.
I thought I was alone in cringing at sentences such as the following.
OMG you are like so RANDOM today, look at your random hat!!!No, no, no! You are allowed to call my hat choice random only if I arranged to have 1000 hats dropped on my position and I emerged wearing said hat. Otherwise it's a deliberate, non-random hat choice. And while we're discoursing on the topic of clothing choice, can I suggest that you take off those massive furry boots? They look silly. And when will you learn that leggings and a long cardigan aren't enough to hide the fact that you haven't got any trousers on? And take your stupid rat-dog out of your handbag before I punt it into the river.
I feel better after that rant. I'm fine now.
Tangentially, can anyone identify what the title of this post refers to? There are shiny GrammarBlog points up for grabs.
Labels: BBC, Jon Richardson, Matt Forde, random, rants, video
posted by Gez at 3:25 pm
290 Comments
Monday, 29 September 2008
Gordon Brown: texture like sun
The premise behind the blog is wonderful in its simplicity. The BBC website allows members of the public to comment on selected stories in a dedicated forum section called Have Your Say. As with most forums this attracts all manner of idiotic fuckwittery including the usual suspects: sheer ignorance, blustering arrogance and your common or garden variety racism. These thoughts are usually delivered with scant regard for even the most basic laws of grammar.
If you don't wish to trawl through the BBC news section searching for these hilarious nuggets of buffoonery, Nelson and Alex of Speak you're Branes (God, I hate writing that) are dedicated and gracious enough to do it for you.
My very first visit unearthed this gem from Acrobatickenny1, Scotland, in response to Gordon Brown's dogging display - I mean speech - at the Labour party conference here in Manchester.to be honest i dont care anymore, no matter how much we moan how much this country actually hates labout we will never be able to push them out, they will decide when the election is and nit us, so i just laught now, bleed me dry and penalise me for not being a muslim for not being gay and for not being a pregnant junckie because lets face it these groups get everything from this lot, i just laught as karma is a wonderful thing
[acrobatickenny1], scotland
Great stuff. Speak You're Branes is now in our list of friends.
Labels: BBC, conference, friends, Gordon Brown, Labour, spelling errors
posted by GrammarBlog at 7:15 pm
4 Comments
Saturday, 20 September 2008
It's a poo of two halves
We all love a sniggery typo - especially on the bastion of decency that is the BBC website.
GB's own Gez excitedly brought this to my attention (although I would expect that the Beeb staff have found it by now).
posted by Tom at 9:46 pm
3 Comments
Thursday, 1 May 2008
Single's, Singles' or Singles?
A clip from last night's Apprentice in which the contestants debate the placement of an apostrophe for about 3 hours.
Should it be "National Single's Day", "National Singles' Day" or "National Singles Day"?
After consulting a couple of style guides I think I know the answer but I'll open it up to you guys to discuss first.
So what do you think?
Labels: apostrophe, BBC, the apprentice, video
posted by Gez at 9:30 am
15 Comments
Monday, 31 March 2008
My hands were literally bleeding
I love The Apprentice. This series has got off to a great start.
Skip to 2:50 to hear the posh git get his comeuppance. I thought it was brilliant to hear someone say, "I literally left with my hands bleeding" and then go on to accuse someone else of hyperbole.
posted by Gez at 2:41 am
4 Comments
Friday, 26 October 2007
Hand in the T(r)ill*
The matter is mentioned in the Wikipedia entry for 'Till Death Do Us Part', and it seems the Beeb has often been confused too:
The BBC, which broadcast the series, refers to the title differently in different locations. The 2004 DVD release uses two 'l's. Even the show's creator referred to it differently on occasions. But "'til" (with an apostrophe) is simply an erroneous twentieth-century rendering of "till", due to the mistaken impression that this is a short form of "until", itself in reality an unnecessary Middle English lengthening of the original (and still perfectly good) word "till". (This lengthening is taken even further in the phrase "up until".) The show's title and that of its sequel were both taken from the traditional wedding vow:
"I N. take thee N. to my wedded wife, to have and to hold from this day forward, for better for worse, for richer for poorer, in sickness and in health, to love and to cherish, till death us do part, according to God's holy ordinance; and thereto I plight thee my troth."
Here is the 'Till' entry in my 1955 Oxford Dictionary:
Till next time.
*This refers to one of my favourite jokes: "A mate of mine worked in a pet shop but he just got the sack. Yeah, he got caught with his hand in the Trill".
Labels: 'til, BBC, grammar, spelling, till, till death do us part, wikipedia
posted by Dan at 12:35 pm
4 Comments
Wednesday, 3 October 2007
Can you lose your hyphen when playing leap-frog?
According to the BBC, last month the Shorter Oxford English Dictionary announced that its sixth edition will remove hyphens from no fewer than 16,000 words.
Some of these, such as leap-frog, will become one word while others will just lose the hyphen; walking-stick for example, will be changed to walking stick.
"But how will we differentiate between a stick designed to aid mobility and a magical stick that can walk?", I hear you cry. The answer is a mixture of context and old fashioned common sense (formerly known as old-fashioned common-sense). If there is genuine ambiguity as to whether the prefix is a verbal noun or a participle adjective then the hyphen must remain; otherwise I find them wholly unnecessary. I would never assume that a pot belly is the belly of an earthenware vessel (unless the context suggested so) so why would I need a hyphen?
The article, however, suggests that technology is the reason the hyphen is becoming unfashionable.
The blame, as is so often the case, has been put at least in part on electronic communication. In our time-poor lifestyles, dominated by the dashed-off [or should that be dashed off or dashedoff] e-mail, we no longer have time to reach over to the hyphen key.Balderdash, I say. Especially as the decrease in hyphen use has coincided with an increase in the use of the dash — an entirely different piece of punctuation but the same button on your keyboard. I have discussed my reasons for liking the dash in a previous post.
But hang on a minute. I don't think I'm quite ready to pen the hyphen's obituary as when I look at the above quote it's my view that "dashed-off" benefits from the hyphen. It just reads better — more smoothly somehow. The hyphen in e-mail, however, doesn't serve any purpose at all and I'm always cursing the Beeb's dogged refusal to join in with the rest of the world and drop it.
I don't know, I guess we're just going to have to play it by ear and be forgiving when it comes to other people's use of this messy, cluttering, largely redundant little character.
Labels: BBC, hyphen, punctuation
posted by Gez at 4:58 pm
8 Comments
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