'The word pedants' top 10 | It's specific, not Pacific...' blog discussion.

fatal1955

One that irritates me is "commoner garden" instead of "common or garden". Like loads of others I have seen, I presume this is based on a guess at the spelling derived from hearing it said. I wish I could remember all the others I've seen. Some made me laugh, others made me want to weep.

PS do'nt get me started on misused or mislocated apostrophes' :rotfl:

fatal1955

• A big ask (nouning a verb)
• She loaned him £20 (verbing a noun)
• "How are you?" "Oh, I'm good" (my question was about your health, not your morals)

:mad:

fatal1955

emcwill wrote: »

for goodness sake!

I think you missed the apostrophe:

for goodness' sake i.e. for the sake of goodness :rotfl:

fatal1955

DerbyPensioner wrote: »

There is a strong trend, particularly on television, to use the present tense to describe actions in the past. For example, "Napoleon marches into Russia" rather than "Napoleon marched into Russia". Its very common amongst historical presenters who are well educated and should know better.

Actually they may be really, really, really well educated and know that in ancient texts such as the New Testament, using the present tense for past events is (was?) a common albeit inconsistent practice. Or you could just chalk it up to dramatic licence (license?).

KimYeovil

abby1234519 wrote: »

I can't help it

There you go again. Or was that deliberate?

KimYeovil

fatal1955 wrote: »

I think you missed the apostrophe:

for goodness' sake i.e. for the sake of goodness :rotfl:

Already called.

KimYeovil

And then there was the little girl who expressed an unhealthily precocious admiration of Formula 1 members on Swap Shop when she mispronounced 'Grand Prix'.

dzug1

Please critique my itinerary

cloughja

My bugbears are:

Expresso - it's Espresso i.e. ESS-PRESS-O, even so-called 'baristas' get this wrong.
Refute - means to prove to be false. So when lawyers say "my client refutes the allegation", they usually mean denies.

And don't get me started on apostrophies :-)

rapido

Olokia wrote: »

I didn't realise about Cirencester, everyone I spoke to including people who live there call it Siren-sester... Thanks
Edit: Wikipedia says Siren-cester...

Obviously they are not from Cirencester, or not originally anyway.

Wikipedia isn't really reliable, it is easily edited by those with bias or an agenda. Especially the Cirencester page.

However in fairness "Siren-ster" is the first pronunciation on the page, actually, not Siren cess pit.