How do you spell "cordal".. or is that right.

as opposed to contrapundal.. [or is that wrong too ? ]

Thanks anyays.

Chordal.

Contrapuntal.

Anyway!

Oh . I was way off woth the chordal. Thanks a lot would of embrassed myself tomorrow giving a presentation.

No probs, glad to be able to help.

Would 'embarrassed', 'with' and 'would have' be helpful, too?

Very best of luck with the presentation!

Cyrilla you kill me Knowing what a stickler you are (and quite rightly so) that peeps use the correct spellings can you help me out as well..I know how irritating it is when I spell something incorrectly.. and would appreciate you or anyone setting me straight.

Ryhthym is that correct...I always have trouble with that..

Accompanist ????

Embouchure or Embochure

Ta ever so ducks...

Andrew

Cyrilla's not the only stickler round here....

rhythm - I remember this by saying it in 4/4 - rHy tHm, with the H in the middle of both groups

embouchure - comes from the French for 'mouth' - la bouche

accompanist - correct! (Have you noticed how many people say accompanyist?)

here's another ---

Rhythm Helps Your Two Hips Move

(credit to my school Head of Department for that one )

Have you noticed how many people say accompanyist?

Yes !

*joins sticklers' club*

Wow - people actually asking for spelling corrections!

I do hope someone will come on soon and ask for the correct spelling of 'definitely', the mis-spelling of which seems to be one of the more frequent solecisms on these boards.

Off to sharpen some red pencils.

Diarrhoea is the difficult one! Luckily we musicians don't use that too often!

Joins sticklers' club, too.



He he! I remember a teacher once writing at the end of one of my essays, "Watch your speling! (sic)".

I rarely have to write the word, but if I do I always want to put an extra I in - accompianist. Because they play a piano, so there's "pian" in it. A logic-induced misspelling, but incorrect all the same!

Phase instead of faze is the one I find greats graits gr8ts grates most bothersome

I'm in the sticklers club too. I would rather be told straight if I've spelt a word wrong, or indeed used incorrect punctuation. That little book by Lynne Truss, 'Eats, shoots and leaves: The Zero Tolerance Approach to Punctuation', comes to mind. A funny but also informative book it should be mandatory reading for school kids these days, few of whom seem to have any grip on punctuation whatsoever, let alone the use of capital letters or correct spelling............

Yes I get qwite uppset wen I sea bad speling. Verbal dyarrear.

WOW!

*Feels a new club coming on*

A.U.K., I seem to have been beaten to answering your questions !

Bagpuss did start up a 'Spelling Police' thread in the Café a little while ago - very humorous (naturally!) but it was removed without further ado.. .

I am DEFINITELY the founder of 'The Sticklers' Club' .

Members so far:

briantrumpet
maggiemay
HelenVJ (Red Pencils Monitor)
AnnC
AmandaL
primrose
Miss Ross
skylark
Edwardo

Thank you, BabyBanana, for having made a lot of Old, Grumpy People Very Happy Indeed!!!

Proffetional as opposed to the correct spelling, professional, is one of the words that gets my goat on this forum. Grrrr!

As a youngster I was told to never guess a spelling, let alone just write it down as it sounded and leave it at that! If I was uncertain I was to ask for help in looking the word up in a dictionary. I guess a problem in school these days is that some of the very young teachers haven't got a clue either - some of them are no more than five or six years older than the children they are teaching.

It reminds me of the computer screen wallpaper I once saw, which mimicked a scrawled note saying: 'i kant tipe so i jus rite on th scren wif kraon.'

Our machine has a built-in spellcheck and does some very strange things. I find that it changes I into i at the drop of a hat and have to go back over all of my replies to check for this before posting them. If i forget i have lots of editing to do.

I hereby submit my application for membership, which I trust will be acceptable in view of my long record of pedantic posts.

My number one hate is "loose" for "lose". Or "may have" for "might have". Or .... just don't get me started, OK?

Can I join, please?

Someone said something that implied that few people of school age know much about punctuation. Whilst I do agree, I think that is possibly a bit of a sweeping generalisation. Of course, it would also be generalising to suggest that everyone was more clued up about such things 30 years ago.

www.howtospelldefinitely.com

Can we add the "Greengrocer's Apostrophe" to the list of heinous crimes please?

Potatoe's 50p/lb

I have added definitely to my list of words to spell and then check as I am guilty of this. I know that Addy gets it wrong but that is because she is thick! She pretends to be posh but she really isn't!

A teacher colleague (years ago) was doing a geography project with her class - all around the walls were posters headed with the word


AUSTRAILIA

In the chemical industry I often see LIQUIFY (should be LIQUEFY), and ALCHOHOL (should be ALCOHOL). BUOYANCY and PARAFFIN are often wrong.
Mind you one of the chemicals we trade is Disodium 2,2'([1,1' bi-phenyl]-4,4'diylvinylene)bis(benzene sulphonate) and there are worse ones still !
Many do not know the difference between STATIONARY and STATIONERY, also LICENCE and LICENSE.

And practiCe / practiSe!

I was only thinking the other day that clubs seemed to have died a death!

I wanna would like very much to join please!

I think you'll find the correct spelling of accompanist is g-o-d
(they have the power to make you sound either much better than you actually are or much worse )

W

My way of remembering this is that noun comes before verb alphabetically.

My pet hates are currently "loose" for "lose", "definately"and "might of" instead of "might have". There's a deal of debate raging in the papers (currently The Independent) about how we ought to simplify English, lose the apostrophe, adopt phonetic spellings and so on. All symptomatic of the way society is dumbed-down to suit the lazy and feckless. Of course, there are people for whom spelling is very tough, and one should accommodate them where possible. But adapt the entire language, with all its myriad beauties and eccentricities, so that the modern pupil (sorry, student) doesn't have to try too hard - pooh to that! Might as well abolish the bass clef because most pianists find it harder to read than the treble clef (actually, that's not a bad idea. I feel a letter to The Independent coming on....)

By the way, can I join the club too, please?

I just remember advice/advise.
I get particularly annoyed when I see something like "Practise Room" in an academic institution. Would they go for help in their spelling to an "Advise Room"?

Oh, a man after my own heart!!!

I've seen 'would of' several times on this forum (eg 'I would of gone to this recital'), grrrrr.

The list of members has been edited to include those who have requested to join.

Any more??

Am I the only one who gets unreasonably irritated by "was sat" instead of "was sitting"....?

"Of" for "have" is rife, not just on this forum. Up 'ear 'ere in t' north we know it's "ave".

No, you're not - it winds me up too - and my OH does it - he reckons it's regional. I'm not convinced.

When someone says 'I was sat' I want to ask 'oh - who put you there?'

(sorry!)

My daughter says I'm "sad"!!

do you have next year's Teddington AL concert in mind by any chance?

Well he might have a point (though clearly it's still wrong). I can't recall my (Yorkshire) dad saying "was sat" but he did used to wind up my (German) mum with such niceties as "we was..."

My Welsh brother in law worked in Doncaster for many years and says we was initially baffled by the word "sithe" (as in see thee) at the end of every sentence. He also reckoned that at road works, Yorkshiremen waited for the red light before proceeding ("Wait while red light shows" - while meaning until). Actually I'm rather fond of dialect (even if it is "we was") but wrong words are just.... well, wrong (as in "methodology" where "method" is correct). Same brother in law came up with a new word from a council meeting "up north" - "irregardless". Love it.

Oh is my name on the list BTW?

How about: your/you're and there/their

As a refugee from Sheffield, who also loves dialect, I have to say I'm not at all convinced "was sat" is regional, either. It is very commonly used here in the south west.

I'd like to go on the list too, please.

As a refugee from Sheffield, who also loves dialect, I have to say I'm not at all convinced "was sat" is regional, either. It is very commonly used here in the south west.


ah - that kind of fits - OH = south-west. I liked your daughter's 'sad', Halka.

Yes, I like dialects and regional character - it would be dreadful if we all sounded the same. But there's colourful and there's wrong - as Pushpull mentioned.

My pet hates:

I aren't sure about... (have heard this from A-level age people )
For good skin, moisturising is key. The key to what??

May I join? I'm a proofreader/copyeditor, but please don't hold that against me, especially when I get things wrong.

I nag my children about 'would of' and also about 'there's' when followed by plurals. I would always say 'there are' two or more of something, but they always say 'there's'. The Spanish use 'hay' for both singular and plural, the Germans have 'es gibt', and the French 'il y a', so maybe I should learn to live with it (but I can't).

I wish that I had studied Latin longer when given the chance, as I once heard a publisher on the radio trying to explain how much easier it was to spell correctly if we understood the original meaning or root of words. I think she was specifically referring to 'ence' and 'ance' spellings, which for me are often guesswork if I don't have a dictionary close by.

I remember 'definite(ly)' because it contains 'finite'.

What about the youngsters who, in conversation, say, "I go", when they mean "I said"? The reply is, "and he goes -".

Or "and I was like.... and she was like......"

Musical link.... Have a listen to "Valley Girl" on Frank Zappa's album "Ship arriving too late to save a drowning witch" (no, it really IS called that) for some west coast valley speak where a lot of this stuff originates. It's like totally awesome.

Count me in too

*goes off to edit clubs list*

Car Expert

W

May I join please? I proofread the essays of most of the people in my year during year 13, and I used to proofread my friend's short stories too. I probably do make some mistakes that I'm unaware of, and I would prefer people to correct me in those circumstances, rather than stay silent.

Everything that's been mentioned so far is something that irritates me. Also, I'm from Yorkshire, and everyone here says "I was sat" and "I aren't", so maybe they are regional things.

I must say, in casual conversation I'm guilty of saying: "Then he said... and I was like... and she went..." The repetition of "said" sounds even worse to me.

When I was doing English GCSE I used to correct my teacher's spelling mistakes. Can I join?

Why do shopkeepers aften drop the 's' on pounds. They will say, 'Thats three pound twenty' please.

Another one common in Yorkshire is ''Pass us a biscuit please' instead of 'Pass me'

I'd like to join too please. I'm not posting very much at the moment but I am reading threads regularly and am thoroughly irritated by the careless spelling of some of the posters. I can tolerate the odd 'typo', but not consistent errors.

****Checks all spelling in her post before adding it, in case a mistake has been made.

Maybe it's just East Yorkshire then.

'Appen not. I was sat here yesterday and I am again today. I aren't going home for a bit yet. I'm a West Riding man (though resident somewhere to the west of the Pennines).