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

pollypenny

Haven't caught up with whole thread, no time.

The increasing use of 'bring' instead of 'take' annoys me.

Last week's ad for M&S in the papers stated 'You can bring your clothes to an Oxfam shop"

Unless the writer/speaker is at the Oxfam shop it should be 'take', surely? Furthermore, the speaker cannot be at every Oxfam shop.

etruscanshades

Patr100 wrote: »

I think you meant Jake the Peg.

-

Aw! I always thought it was Jeg! Jake doesn't rhyme, but I've never seen it written down only sung, so I'm sure you're right.

etruscanshades

KimYeovil wrote: »

I think you missed the original post. It was a complaint about this site being called "Martin Lewis' MSE" rather than "Martin Lewis's". And the correspondent wrote "for goodness sake" rather than either apostrophe-ed version.

Thanks! Yes I did miss that one. So are we all agreed that its not necessary to add an extra "s" after the apostrophe, but you can if you really want to? (shudders).

SJ_Jones

uh-oh..... http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-12893416

etruscanshades

Barter wrote: »

We're certainly now at the 'repeating the same complaint that many others have made because we've not read everything or we've forgotten' point of the argument. At least if you're mentioning sixth, its, arksed, fing, or others oft repeated, please acknowledge that it's already been posted & discussed, rather than implying that yours is an original post.

So, fingers crossed that this hasn't already been said: I was taught that often should be pronounced offen, so hearing the t grates on me.

Oooh! Lah Di Dah! To be really posh it should be pronounced "orphan" :-)

Paul_Varjak

quoia wrote: »

QUALIFIED - "Tomorrow I'm going to try 200% harder than yesterday" - so you're going to double your previous efforts ...

If you try 100% harder you would be doubling your efforts, if you try 200% harder you would be tripling your efforts!

Paul_Varjak

The word 'obviously' is overused in a similar way to 'basically'.

I remember Kate Humble on a weekly TV programme with some zoo workers. I had to give up watching the programme because one of the zoo employees used the words 'basically' and 'obviously' every bloomin' week.

Paul_Varjak

Tupperware_Queen wrote: »

the definition of decimate is to reduce by 10% - so how can something be totally decimated?

So, how come December is the twelfth month and October the tenth month?

Paul_Varjak

ShaneUK wrote: »

One of my hates is "stationary" and "stationery". The silly thing is, it is easy to get it right.

Stationary - a as in the arrival of a train
Stationery - e as in envelopes

Stationary trains never arrive!

abby1234519

etruscanshades wrote: »

Do you mean "proper grammar"? :-)

Straight after I wrote that I though, hmmm is it grammar or grammer, for some reason I never know which one it is. And I know every time I write that down I get it wrong.
I have no excuse, I will never get it right