talkmagic.co.uk

nickj wrote:Mixing this topic with pet hates; Brought rather than bought, wrong forms of there, they're and their or your and you're make me want to kill the perpetrator.

And don't get me started on which/that, which is another area of frequent error that riles me.

Lenoir wrote:

kevsashark wrote:Any errors I make in this post are blamed on my dog for taking off certain keys with his claws. The keyboard still works, but not like it used to!

That's so ridiculous it HAS to be true!

Ridiculous, infuriating, and true!

Can we treat this thread like the Bingo thread?

Chris wrote:Yeh we wanted something people cud keep...the save the dates wer tickets, which had a perfurated edge like an old show would have had...

who keeps cud except cows anyway?

If anyone wants to become completely tangled up in grammar, try writing several magazine articles at once. Every mag has a stylesheet (or styleguide). The stylesheet dictates the "house style" to be observed when writing for that particular market. Naturally, stylesheets are all different, and they're not short documents. The stylesheet for the recently demised Personal Computer World was 17 pages long, which is by no means the longest.

Tomo wrote:Every mag has a stylesheet (or styleguide).

Judging by the state of the copy I receive every month I'd be very surprised if many writers read these documents

Ted wrote:Judging by the state of the copy I receive every month I'd be very surprised if many writers read these documents

We're not thinkers. If we were, we'd be editors!

Is now a good time to link to http://bbctraining.com/pdfs/newsstyleguide.pdf ? In my opinion it's always good to have a personal style guide, and mine is heavily based on that

And for those people complaining about bad grammar need to remember that english is a language which is always evolving and nuts to you if you want to complain about insignificant issues that you need a degree in english language to know

Although don't get me wrong, the simple stuff like they're/their/there can be annoying, but you need to take in consideration people who simply struggle with this kind of thing (the number of which is higher than you realise)

Chris wrote:the words TOMO tattoed above here behind...

Where do I start?

Can i please be excused by the Grammer police..... i have my keyboard set up for german and hense i dunno where half the punctuation marks are.... my question mark is ü not to mentions letters are reversed too.... yes i could put it back, but using it .... so nar...

F x

queen of clubs wrote:I thought I'd point out that "Magician's Hall of Fame" should actually read "Magicians' Hall of Fame" since the former literally refers to a single magician

Well done Queenie, that was a deliberate error designed to see who was awake and who wasn't - and if you believe that you'll believe anything !

On the topic of keyboards set for other languages, I tried using one in Turkey a few years ago and had to give up - the letters and numbers are all there, in a strange order, but just didn't work the same as the UK keyboard... although it could have been due to the consumption of too much local firewater....

Can I be excused on account of writing disability?

Honestly parts of English make no sense to me. Granted people who focus on it also make no sense to me. There was a group I used to hang with that were on a mission to teach me to, too.

I can not fathom why too is so much more important than to in specific circumstances. It isn't a judgment just that its likely bilateral. My inability to understand why it is important is likely just as baffling to people who find it so important.

I do wish I could do it I've tried really really hard to figure out this whole written form it just escapes me. I probably spent 2 years on trying to figure out exactly why people need a period at the end of a sentence. Sad but true.

--Infy

nickj wrote:
Mixing this topic with pet hates; Brought rather than bought, wrong forms of there, they're and their or your and you're make me want to kill the perpetrator.

I hope I've not made any mistakes myself recently!

I have similar feelings about "third person and me" versus "third person and I".

Don't get me started on people who say "third person and myself"...

It's interesting how people get so wound up about grammar.

Whenever I see a post with someone ranting about the use of your and you're, I think about how powerful those words are in hypnosis: "your unconscious" vs "you're unconscious". The implications for anyone familiar with Erickson or even Bandler will be obvious. Even verbally, these two phrases have an amazing effect (affect ) if used properly. I love embedded commands

I tend to dismiss faux clever posts that use big words but which repeatedly make the same simple grammatical mistake as the pompous, supercilious rants they are.

This one included.