Snow gates in Scotland

Oh, I thought you were using a euphemism for a swearword.

A tyre is a tyre, if they were s*it they wouldn't be legal.

How odd. If mine don't wear below the legal limit, they end up cracking. In only replace tyres at the annual health and softy check, and I'd say I change the front ones every year and the back ones every other year. I do about 10K a year. I mean 1K, yes, the insurance was told 1K, that must be correct.

You'd be better doing the maths. Or can Merkins only do addition?

Sometimes they get things right. Rarely, but it does happen.

What's the mark I put in the first word in this sentence then?

It is used on its own, which makes it an apostrophe. The same mark, at least in this font, can also serve as single quotation marks, which are always used in pairs.

Unnecessarily ambiguous. For example: Julie replied, 'Don't do that' See how clumsily she seems to have said 'don', since the apostrophe is the same as the end quote. Much clearer is: Julie replied, "Don't do that" Using the same mark for apostrophe and quotation is monumentally stupid. Don't just follow the British rules, follow the most sensible ones.

It is completely obvious that the end quote does not fulfil any of the purposes of an apostrophe an must, therefore, be an end quote and the mark in the middle must be an apostrophe.

I will continue to write English they way I was taught at school and resist attempts to Americanise the language.

Being a programmer the nuances vary between languages. I won't even go into the mysteries of '`'.

The only tires I have that are cracking are on one of the bikes and they are Metzlers that had a bad run of tires from their Brazil plant.

I wasn't the person who mentioned Roadstone. The Dunlop 401 is a motorcycle tire known for it's durability but it isn't the stickiest tire compound going so they became known as Dunrocks in some circles.

Dunlop makes a wide range of bike tires. I ran 606 knobbies on the DR for a while. They weren't as noisy as some but they had a pretty good howl. I changed them out for a less aggressive Kenda model.

The 'mericans can't even speek or write 'merican - muchless English

The use of single quotation marks appears to date to 1908, when Fowler recommended them in _The King's English_.

Americans would appear to be more conservative in their usage.

I am sure that would have been one of my English teacher's reference books. To me, it is logical to start with single quotation marks and then double them for quotes within the original quote.

In message <TPRtL.239313$ snipped-for-privacy@fx15.iad, Cindy Hamilton snipped-for-privacy@invalid.com writes

I use the single apostrophes (eg 'xxxx') to indicate (for example) something which not a direct quotation of what somebody said, but which is instead something sort-of descriptive, or often called, or so-called. For example, I might write "Some people are absolutely obsessed with 'global warming', while others dismiss it out of hand." [Well, it makes sense to me!]

As is often the way with American English. I’ve gotten used to it. ;-)

Tim

Only going to confuse a computer.

That is the real point.

Not to most of the people who use the term. They think it is the distance between the wheel center and the road

Oh go on, I've always wondered what that key is for (which on my keyboard is left of the number one), containing ` and tilde (which I can't actually find as this keyboard is American and the computer thinks it's British).

Do you store your car(s) inside? Mine are outdoors in a soggy climate.