DIY English

[TheOldFellow]

I note an exasperating trend on this list, and on t'internet in general, to personal reinvention of English spelling and grammar. For instance: the Whitworth spellings for the various flavours of 'your and you're' (as opposed to the UNF or Metric, of course) are as follows:

'You're' means 'you are', 'your' never ever means that. 'Your' is a possessive pronoun, and can only be used when you mean that something belongs to 'you'.

Do try and get it right folks, as the grating sounds of the crossed-threads in my brain are getting irritating.

R.

[nightjar]

... would have earned us the ire of our English Master. Contractions were never permitted.

Colin Bignell

[TGH]

Another one that is really winding me up is the use of "teh" instead of "the", why do it?

[Rod]

Didn't you miss yaw and yore?

And who can ignore the "upto" neologism? And its close brethren - inappropriate use of into, onto and so on.

[tinnews]

That (in my case anyway) is just a typo (typographic error). When typing reasonably fast in my non-touch-typing way of doing it transposing the e and the h of 'the' is a common error.

I usually spot it and correct it but sometimes it creeps through.

[Tim Lamb]

In message , TheOldFellow writes

Nothing compared to my ravings when BBC clips confuse bought and brought.

regards

[Phil]

Of course he could of brought it in a shop. Then he might loose it.

[brass monkey]

"We could of (have) done it" really grates as does "mine is larger then (than) yours". There, they're, their seem to cause problems too.

[Osprey]

I'm Welsh so have my excuse over any English inaccuracies.

To be honest ... does it matter, this is a DIY site, and as long as the text conveys the general gist of the meaning, and all can understand ... it hardly matters ?

We even have totally different words for things depending on geographic areas .... (noggins, dwangs etc) ... a stray or misplaced apostrophe is not that important.

Some people thrive in finding fault in the work of others, please consider any errors in my posts put there specifically for that purpose.

[Steve Firth]

The exasperating trend that I notice is people referring to news groups as "lists" or "boards" or "forums". One would think in this day and age that such ignorant folk would learn the proper terms for the medium that they are exploiting.

[stuart noble]

Your/you're is understandable in a way, the former being easier in a mobile text message. As long as everyone understands the meaning, I don't really care. What I object to is the trend towards Orwellian doublespeak. "Strict guidelines" is particularly spooky.

[Lynet Smith]

misuse of I and me - goodbye from x and I is so common on radio/TV, BBC and others. If you would not say goodbye from I then you don't say it from x and I either!

[The Natural Philosopher]

mind faster than teh fingers.

[Mike Tomlinson]

In article , TheOldFellow writes

"would of" to replace "would have". Infuriating.

[Dave]

Your joking of course ! Dave

[shorepot15]

This is going to sound horribly smug, but I'm really only trying to help get things right. 'Your' isn't a possessive pronoun; it's a possessive adjective. 'Yours' and 'mine' are possessive pronouns.

[robgraham]

I'm not a pedant and I'm certainly not suggesting that this thread comes out of pedancy, but one thing I consider applies to all dedicated DIY'ers is that they are usually people who have an eye for quality and like to do things so that they look good and last.

Personally if someone writes in with a badly worded/spelt/grammarised posting, I very quickly start to get annoyed by it and in the end will usually end up considering it a load of trash. The quality of your advice comes through in how well you dispense it and that includes going through your posting and checking the spelling, etc.

Rob (having gone through this and found several errors)

[Don]

T.V ads are bad though too...."Nothing works faster than Anadin"....o.k I'll use nothing!

Don.

[Peter Parry]

I hear what you say and take on board the general drift of your thoughts. It is important in any community to have everyone pulling in the same direction so we must accommodate your concerns, air them out and bounce ideas off others to bring them along and so avoid anticipointment.

At this juncture we need to stir fry ideas in the think-wok before the come to Jesus meeting. It is essential that we get 360 degree feedback and leverage our core competencies to minimise Cyberslacking. We must deep dive the deja moo to deliver the goods. It's vital we dial-in the good doctor plumber whose insighfull utterances disambiguate and aid dogfooding.

In this palace of knowledge we drink from the firehose and often drive beyond the headlights. No one drinks the Kool-aid and other than the duck shufflers we are all happy to eat a reality sandwich. We all know that even dead cats bounce and we get on the runway to extract the max from blue-sky thinking. No one here loses the bubble or has a low decision latitude. We need to avoid time crunch, zero latency to zero , actualise the need and experience the emergent learning this group can deliver.

[S Viemeister]