Pedants' Corner

[Reckless Rat]

Did you know that if you got everyone that worked for the Gas Board and laid them all end to end, they still wouldn't reach to our house.


(I hope someone else didn't start a thread like this over a year ago and it died...)

[Ian Dunford]

I hope this is not to be an elitist thread limited to just one pedant.

[Reckless Rat]

You noticed!

[David Stepney]

If you change the title to "Pedants' Corner", can I join too,please?

[Reckless Rat]

Unfortunately, once you hit the "enter" button your typographical mistakes are entombed forever unless a generous moderator comes to your assistance. I also thought (afterwards) that "corner" might not sufficiently inclusive. Perhaps "circle" would render the thread more open and P.C.

[Colin Morgan]

Can you not change a title any time you want as the originator of the thread? It is done the same way as changing titles on Windows' computer files... just go to the title, click and hold down until it allows you to edit. (The apostrophe might be then be repositioned to help reflect the number of pedants present.)

[Duncan Grimmond]

I'm using a Mac, can I still join?

Here are some of my favourite bêtes-noires
Into, as in importing or exporting or arriving into..
Honing in instead of homing in..as in signal or pigeon
Off his own back (rather than bat, it's a cricketing analogy..)
Glad I got that off my chest!

[Nick Lettington]

Did you know that if you got everyone that worked for the Gas Board and laid them all end to end, they still wouldn't reach to our house.


(I hope someone else didn't start a thread like this over a year ago and it died...)

As it happens RR, I think you will find most topics have been covered by multiple threads ad nauseum... I hope you did the decent thing and searched the word "Pedant" before risking further plagiarism? The gentlemanly thing to do would've been to resuscitate the previous thread... no no he's not dead, he's just resting...

Well... anyways... for a minute there I thought you were a little piqued, but then realised that we are all friends here.

[andrew34ruby]

What about the missing word 'an', simply replaced with 'a'? Even Mr Grimmond wrote .... a NYCC, whereas I would always say 'an NYCC'. For example 'are you a NYCC ratepayer?" And for those who don't know, NYCC is North Yorkshire County Council. A council that will not exist in two years time.
I also saw a mention of a Austin seven.

Also when did a number of items become an amount of items?

[Robert Leigh]

Another thing that annoys me as a pedant is the frequent use of the recently invented word 'focused'. When I was a lad the past tense of focus was focussed, with double 's'. The pronounciation of the word is changed by the single 's'.