Board "Style book" and Grammar

Running_On_Empty

Looking to ... sell my house, get a job.
Driving license.
Hospitalised.

GDB2222

Yes, I keep thinking I should put superglue in the lock to really disable the toilets.

A._Badger

lemonjelly wrote: »

The above also makes me think of nail technician.

NAIL TECHNICIAN!!!!!

Ladies, are nails such complex entities that they require TECHNICIANS?

Aircraft require technicians. Race cars require technicians.

Nails, do blummin not require technicians.

"Race cars"? Now there's an Americanism we could do without! It's "racing cars" in English. It's also "frying pan" not "fry pan" and Selfridges is in Oxford St, not on Oxford St, as no one at the BBC any longer seems aware.

michaels

I love the hose metaphor but there is something of the definition of infinity in there methinks (not sure I will get away with that one on this thread). It is a bit like Hamish's model of exponential house price growth.

HAMISH_MCTAVISH wrote: »

The U.S. Social Security Administration has provided the following response to the "Ponzi scheme" accusation:

There is a superficial analogy between pyramid or Ponzi schemes and pay-as-you-go insurance programs in that in both money from later participants goes to pay the benefits of earlier participants. But that is where the similarity ends. A pay-as-you-go system can be visualized as a simple pipeline, with money from current contributors coming in the front end and money to current beneficiaries paid out the back end. As long as the amount of money coming in the front end of the pipe maintains a rough balance with the money paid out, the system can continue forever. There is no unsustainable progression driving the mechanism of a pay-as-you-go pension system, and so it is not a pyramid or Ponzi scheme. If the demographics of the population were stable, then a pay-as-you-go system would not have demographically-driven financing ups and downs, and no thoughtful person would be tempted to compare it to a Ponzi arrangement. However, since population demographics tend to rise and fall, the balance in pay-as-you-go systems tends to rise and fall as well. This vulnerability to demographic ups and downs is one of the problems with pay-as-you-go financing. But this problem has nothing to do with Ponzi schemes or any other fraudulent form of financing; it is simply the nature of pay-as-you-go systems.[1]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ponzi_scheme

michaels

More of a style than grammar one here; but I have a strong dislike of the really long sentences with multiple sub clauses, often running to a whole paragraph - leading to a dense passage of prose without sufficient white space to break up the posting - and without exception poorly punctuated that some posters insist on typing in order to fully elucidate their argument - often ellipses are also used to imply that the completion of the thought should be left to the reader...

However I can rarely be bothered to go back and redo my posts beyond correcting the spelling.

Davesnave

vivatifosi wrote: »

I really dislike road signs that say 'liable to flooding' and 'liable to icing'. Why can't they just say 'likely to flood' or 'prone to flooding'?

The County Council put one in our school drive that read, 'Drive slow.' The Head had to go out with a pot of paint to add 'ly.' :rotfl:

chris_m

There's a sign I pass quite frequently in Cumbria that reads "Red squirrels drive slowly".

I bet they do, it must be tricky for them to see out and reach the pedals at the same time ;-)

StevieJ

Generali wrote: »

The only thing in the use of English that p 1 sses me off is people getting pompous about Americanisms like 'fall' (meaning autumn) or 'color'. I always spell words with the suffix -ise/-ize with -ize in the hope that it might annoy someone like that.
.

Do you also use that Americanism math? it always sounds incomplete to me, a little like when Leopold used to play the scale to Amadeus with one note missing to get him out of bed

RenovationMan

chris_m wrote: »

There's a sign I pass quite frequently in Cumbria that reads "Red squirrels drive slowly".

I bet they do, it must be tricky for them to see out and reach the pedals at the same time ;-)

This reminds me of the "Slow mud on the road" signs where a properly placed comma could make all the difference to the meaning of the sentence. As it stands I always thank my stars that we dont have any fast mud, it could zoom across the road and cause accidents!

andykn

I try and concentrate my ire more on where confusion can occur.

That and Which are two of the most common contenders.

Specifically on fora such as this I detest sad posters trying to be Daily Mail news workers; "house prices collapsed by 20%". NO, 20% is not a "collapse".

And house prices are only in a "bubble" if you are in the 70% club (and even then it's stretching the meaning of "bubble" compared with the original South Sea bubble or Tulip mania), or a news worker.