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Curmudgeons ' Corner 😠

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  • DovefromaboveDovefromabove Posts: 88,147
    @Lyn 😊 you make a very good point ... you’ll have to feel sorry for us pedants whose sensibilities are so easily upset and who fail to appreciate the important things in life ... we can’t help it but we will try to do better 😉 

    Gardening in Central Norfolk on improved gritty moraine over chalk ... free-draining.





  • raisingirlraisingirl Posts: 7,093
    edited May 2019
    AnniD said:
    Probably been said before, but beginning a sentence with "So,".

    It isn't always wrong - @Lyn correctly used 'so' at the beginning of an interrogative sentence a couple of pages back. It's only when it's being used in place of 'ummm' it's annoying. "When did you begin collecting teapots?" "So it was when I was 5 and my granny gave me a porcelain train". 
    Politicians use 'look' in the same way. "Why haven't you brought in a law banning people from starting a sentence with 'so'?" "Look, there are many people who find it irritating and it's often used incorrectly. Nevertheless there is a case for 'so' in modern discourse and we don't feel that banning it entirely would be appropriate".

    Lyn is also right to say that pedantry is a handicap. Nitpicking the way people speak generally only alienates people who are speaking perfectly clearly. Many of the 'rules' are actually made up anyway - ending a sentence with a preposition, splitting infinitives, that sort of thing. There's no real problem with comprehension if you get those 'wrong', it's just convention and who cares about convention? Not me. Should of, on the other hand, is just sloppy.

    It is helpful to have an outlet for this disability, for those of us who suffer the affliction. The one that was bugging me this week was the chap who had his medals "taken off him", according to the BBC. Quite apart from the injustice of the military decision, did someone really stand in front of him and rip them off his jumper? Or - I would have thought - were they really take from him?

    Gardening on the edge of Exmoor, in Devon

    “It's still magic even if you know how it's done.” 
  • KT53KT53 Posts: 9,016
    Not upset just annoyed and irritated.  Even more so when it's a family member doing it and you have to bite your tongue!
  • B3B3 Posts: 27,505
    He turned round and went to me...

    Dybollicul libber-ee

    Learners' journey
     

    In London. Keen but lazy.
  • raisingirlraisingirl Posts: 7,093
    innit?
    Gardening on the edge of Exmoor, in Devon

    “It's still magic even if you know how it's done.” 
  • DovefromaboveDovefromabove Posts: 88,147
    I remember at our village school, if someone said ‘he took it off me Miss’ ... the head teacher would say ‘You are not a Christmas tree’ 😆 

    Gardening in Central Norfolk on improved gritty moraine over chalk ... free-draining.





  • BenCottoBenCotto Posts: 4,718
    ‘I was stood’, ‘I was sat’ - who put you there, I want to ask.

    Pre-booking? That’s tautological.

    ”We’ll be re-doubling our efforts ...’ - will you be quadrupling them, then?

    Question marks at the end phrases that aren’t direct questions


    The list runs and runs. Seeing spelling errors and what I perceive to be grammatical errors, and seeing them more frequently, just grates with me. Rather pathetically I think of it as a mild affliction.

    Raisingirl, at least those medals weren’t taken off of him.
    Rutland, England
  • B3B3 Posts: 27,505
    I don't mind if differences are due to dialect. It's what makes our language interesting.
    In London. Keen but lazy.
  • LynLyn Posts: 23,190
    Very interesting🙂
    The pedants would probably die if they lived here, I’ll ask she to do that, or her will do it. 
    I don't think there was much schooling done down here, the boys were kept home at certain times of the year, it was all hands to the deck at hay making time, the girls in the kitchen.
    I don’t like the question at the end of every sentence, most of Plymouth speak like that. 
    But it’s what they’ve heard so they will copy. 

    Gardening on the wild, windy west side of Dartmoor. 

  • DovefromaboveDovefromabove Posts: 88,147
    Oh no ... I love ‘asking she’ and ‘her will’ etc. It flows and isn’t ‘awkward’. 

    Gardening in Central Norfolk on improved gritty moraine over chalk ... free-draining.





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