Pedants' Corner

[JonE]

it is one of the reasons the forum could ideally have separate discussion spaces to hide away some of the social stuff beyond 7s. This, the Austin 7 jokes and so on bring to mind my elderly grandfather's tatty copy of Frank Muir next to the lav in the smallest room... on top of the Readers Digests.

The forum is so valuable but I'm not sure it isn't one of many things which caters for the luvvies - the old guard - and not the new ones we need to attract, many who will be brought up with txtspk and will just want to fnd info pls, perhaps in a slightly curt way. I've had to gradually learn not to have inner disdain when seeing the state of my eldest's handwriting and grammar. Fortunately his school deals with this more objectively than me by properly assessing his thinking, and his mock results now show that the system has a good way to assess intelligence beyond being dyslexic - and having obvious outward signs of this.

[Colin Morgan]

Welcome to Pedant's Corner - and the winner is?

[Tony Griffiths]

Dyslexia:
In another life, the cleverest boy I ever taught, David, could hardly string two written words together - but after six months I was only half a page ahead of him of a maths course of three years ahead, he was already deep into the book of 'Advanced Programs in Basic' and could handle HTML as though he'd been born knowing it inside out.
One Monday morning a copy of the just-announced MS Powerpoint dropped into the office. "What's this?" we wondered. "Slides, what slides?". Handing this package over to David, I dispatched him to the computer room to find out. After just 90 minutes of playing with it, he gave me a master class in how to use it. Amusingly, the next week, the staff were summoned to an evening course, "How to use Powerpoint". Unfortunately, the poor chap demonstrating it was not at all comfortable and struggled horribly with the details. Sitting on the front row I was able to whisper a few suggestions that helped him along. "How on earth do you know all this?" asked my boss, sitting next to me.
"I gave it to David last week and he showed me," I replied.
"Good God." replied the boss, "We should have brought him to do the lecture."
Back at work, that's exactly what happened, the eleven-year-old gave a proper and remarkably geek-free and demonstration of how to get to grips with it. We were tempted to have a whip-round for him!

[Duncan Grimmond]

Even the word “luvvies” ( much loved by the Mail & Sun) has dark connotations in that is a shortened form of “lefty luvvies” which as “any fule kno” comes straight from McCarthy-ism, ie “commie queers”…

[Ruairidh Dunford]

Tony,

A few years ago, a pupil who struggled to write his name and read, could recall up to 24 digits in the correct sequence

He also always remembered everyone’s birthday date, correctly, I often wonder if NASA ever employed him.

[dickie65]

I hate passwords due to having the uncanny knack of transposing digits and letters, putting capital letters in the wrong place

It took me four years to remember my mobile phone number !!!!

A policeman stopped me once while I was driving my mothers car, He asked me what the registration number was ?
I replied that as he was already outside the car it would save me the bother of getting out to look at the number plate to tell him the number.
I did offer to get out and read it for him.
My mother was in the back seat and thought it was very funny !! She had a few glasses of Vino Collapso which is why I was driving.

[David Stepney]

Whilst I am quite pedantic about English grammar, I must admit to not being immune from the odd grammatical 'faux pas', such as:-
Starting a sentence with "So"
Using two "ands" in the same sentence.

The trouble with posting on line is there is a temptation to press the 'Post' button and then realising one's mistake. I believe it is called the "Oh B*gg*r" factor!

However, perhaps there is a tendency especially amongst those of us of a certain age, to forget that language is constantly evolving. If we all started to write our prose in the way that Victorian writers did, then it would be considered rather odd. Even listening the the clipped pronunciation that was used by BBC announcers when I was little sound strange to modern ears, whereas the Oxford accent for the twenties would sound positively affected today (perhaps it was in the twenties too! I know that D.H. Lawrence wrote a poem castigating it.)

The purpose of language is communication, and, provided the meaning is clear and unambiguous, then perhaps we should put up with such shortcuts as 'm8' (mate), 'LOL' (laugh out loud), the liberal use of Americanisms and so on, even though, for me, such things grate. Remember that English spelling was not put on a consistent footing until Dr. Samuel Johnson compiled his dictionary in the mid-eighteenth century.

Mind you, being pedantic about these things is so much fun.........

[Ruairidh Dunford]

100% agree David, well said.

[Ian Williams]

If you are going to berate people you see as lesser than yourselves you are arrogant fools, it also astonishes me that there are some who complain about American spellings when at times they are far more correct to the origins of our language then the British spellings. The major problem with the UK is superior attitudes of many who frequent the island, shame on you all I wonder how some of our valued contributors here who quite obviously have either dyslexia or were let down be the education system feel. There is no argument that can justify belittling people who you perceive to be lesser than yourselves. SHAME on you all!

[Henry Harris]

Well said.