I say nothing.

(My teacher would say... that's an oboist for you!)



(My teacher would say... that's an oboist for you!)

And do you wash the tablecloth when the glass has filled to running over?

Reminds me of years ago when I first got a word processor. It was French and didn't have an English spell-check so I copied the relevant bit off my father's English computer and loaded it onto mine. To check it was working I tried it out on something I was writing about how white English women got the vote in South Africa. The grammar check had a "politically correct" option activated and replaced "men" and "women" by "people" (to avoid sexism) and removed "black" and "white" (because they were racist terms). The result was something like: "For years people refused to listen to people's campaigns but eventually people decided to give people the right to vote because they wanted to remove people from the electoral role in the Cape."

I've never come across a politically-correct grammar check before, but that is hilarious!

How do you delete a post? (One of your own, that is.)

Edit it so that it only contains a full stop?

I either change the post to say 'post deleted' or similar, with or without a qualifying reason, or I change the post to say ' - '. Usually the former.

I have heard that some software once bowdlerised (I love that word...) the name of the male star of Mary Poppins to "Jerk Van Gay".

I always say 'When' too...

I'm clearly mad, but to me that makes no sense at all.

When I was little I remember my grandma saying "Say when" and I didn't associate it with when at all I thought it was a separate word WEN that was only used for stopping pouring.

In my house it was a joke. The request was to "say when", so you said "when".
Of course, you should be able to say stop or enough or thank you, because the meaning of "say when" is "say something to let me know I've put sufficient content in to this glass".
But if instructed by my step-father to "say when", you had better say "when" if you wanted the pouring to ever stop

(Mind you, as a child he got a clip round the ear when asked to say grace one evening, and he replied "Grace!" Kind of indicates his sense of humour).

I have only just noticed that on every page of my children's Music Services practice diaries are printed the words - "record your practice times or simply tick the box when you have practiced."

I had to go to the music stool and hunt through the old books to make sure that it wasn't a new typing error - I can't believe that it has taken me four years to pick up on that one.

Ah - I heard that it was P*nis van Lesbian...

Remind me to tell my young niece NOT to read this thread!

Er, your young what?!

I must admit that I am guilty of this I say "like" all the time... I can't help it! I'm not inarticulate or a "typical" teen by most standards, but somehow it sneaks in...

After I explaining something, I might then say ...'for example' and give an example.
A colleague of mine irritatingly always says ...............''as a for example' ........ Why the 'as a' ?

Oh and another one of similar ilk. My son , when we would say 'You're joking!' always says 'You're joking me!'

( )

I must have missed the earlier posts about "like".

Last summer I enrolled my younger daughter for a drama course in England thinking that not only does she like acting but it would be a good opportunity for her to mingle with English children her own age and perhaps develop a more "natural" English (both my daughters have a very grown-up way of speaking English). What I hadn't bargained for was her coming home at the end of the first day using "like" as every second word

Fortunately this wore off once we got back to France

oh dear.

Slightly off topic, but that story did remind me of these characters from Armstrong and Miller.

The Guardian, headline:
"Go-ahead for flouride in tap water"

And just in case you thought it was a headline writer's mistake, the text begins:
"Renewed efforts to add flouride to tap water across the UK are likely after the high court gave the go-ahead for the NHS in Southampton to do so."

Well that'll gum up the works

Why do TV presenters often end with 'see you next week' ?
We will see them but they won't see us

Just got round to reading the Christmas 'Private Eye' - and in their 'I-Spy' section (readers send in their photos of signs) was a beautifully printed banner, complete with a lovely picture of some holly leaves and berries, bearing the words:

HOLLY REEFS 5.00

I keep it on my desk because just looking at it makes me smile..

I can't think what programme it was, but there was one that used to end with "so tune in this time next week", and I used to think "what, just in time to catch you signing off then?"

"Welcome BACK to part 2"

I'm posting this here in the hope that someone will look before tomorrow...

I'm covering some lectures for someone and am currently revising her slides before sending the material for Tuesday's lecture to reprographics (needs to be done tomorrow). I can't work out whether she's wrong, or I am...

Is the word 'politics' singular or plural? I had thought that the word was always plural. The other lecturer (who knows more about the topic than I do!) is using the word in the singular, and all the way through the slides she is using questions such as "What is politics?". I think that the correct phrasing would be "What are politics?" but I don't want to change everything if I'm wrong.

Which is correct?

I would always treat "politics" as singular. If it's plural, what is a politic?

I would use is, in this case. I wouldn't have a slide saying What Are Mathematics? and I think it can be treated in the same way.

What's puzzling me is that the whole group of lectures (there's 4 of them) are looking at the complexity and multiplicity of politics (the fact that there isn't one thing which can be considered 'politics') and the myriad of ways these manifest across, and shape, space and social practices.

I was taught that the term 'politics' was always plural (like 'data' is always plural), but don't know if the person who taught me this was wrong with regards to 'politics'. If you were asking about data then the question "What is data?" would be incorrect. It would need to be "What are data?" because data is always used in the plural.

The person who wrote the text book we use seems to have got round the problem by avoiding the term.

On second thoughts ...
According to the Concise OED, it's a plural noun which is also treated as singular. Three examples are given:
1. "Politics is a dirty business."
2. "What are his politics?"
3. "The politics of the decision is not clear."
But the examples reflect slightly different meanings that the word may have. 1 is an example of the meaning "political affairs or life". 2 and 3 are examples of the meaning "political principles". I think it would sound odd to treat the word as a plural if it has the former meaning. But, for the latter meaning, I agree that the plural seems more natural.

Or the sign in a Tokyo florist's shop saying 'Sweet Pees'..........

Flossie, if you haven't gone to bed then "politics is" designates political science and "politics are" refers to someone's political beliefs.

Thanks. I'm dealing with a fusion of the two. No wonder it's confusing.

Both of you are correct. The Shorter (2 vol) OED says it's a plural noun, treated as plural or singular. These kind of issues are dealt with on a case-by-case basis, so what you might do for mathematics is not germane (ie don't worry). The etymology also doesn't matter once the OED has spoken!

More important is to be CONSISTENT. So use 'is' or 'are' but don't swap between the two (in a publication, lecture, etc).

In this case, assuming you will be speaking to the slides and will presumably follow your own own rule when speaking, you'd be sensible to change.

The only caveat: if you don't have time to do it with care and ensure ALL are changed, don't do it at all. Nothing hits the eye quicker than an inconsistency.

<EDIT> Should have added... check that there isn't a 'house' style' for the department/school/whatever that dictates it should be singular... tho' if that were so I should think it would have filtered thro'. <end>

Agreed. But, if the word is used in both senses, it would be quite correct to treat it as plural in one sense and singular in the other. Indeed this might help distinguish the two senses.

Using two terms rather than the single word would be even clearer.

True!

That reminds me of a local Garden Centre offering 'Peeproof' larch lap fencing.

There also used to be a smallholding down the A580 offering Lettuce's, Tomatoe's and Potatoe's.

And a large sign in Birkenhead offering TAXI'S
Another in Heswall (now replaced), offered fitting of BURGULAR ALARMS

Finally (in Nottingham)

PLEASE HELP OUR NURSES HOME

For all the pedants around (and I can be one - I'm a bit of a stickler for correcting bad grammar)

I thought I'd post this - just to make us think ....


"How important is spelling really ????"




P.S. Sorry if this has been done before. Not really been following this thread.

Flossie, what did you do? (Being a pedant I need to know!)

I think spelling still has some importance. All that's been done in the above example is to make typos where the letters are swapped around. I suspect that if the words were spelled wrongly in the first place, and then letters were swapped around, it might be harder to decode the message.

If you go back to pre-dictionary times, there are variant spellings of all kinds of words, but they can be read because the phonetics work. In practice, common misspellings nowadays are perfectly comprehensible, but serve to incense the pedants - this may be because there is underlying resentment that all the effort put into learning spelling as a child is now shown to be a waste of time!

I've changed it all to plural. I think I'd have been falling over my tongue otherwise.

Lets hope I don't have too many students who did A-level politics.

Edit: I don't teach politics and the lecture in question is not part of a politics course...

Good decision. Good reasoning.

Students either won't notice or won't mind, or will be used to vagaries of lecturers. If they question it, you have plenty of ammo from the combined fiercesome forum pedants.

Hope it goes well. I have spent today worrying about footnote punctuation. Pity me.

You're most probably right

I've just listened to an advertisement on the radio for a local college that offers veterinary and agricultural style courses. They purposely used a student (or an actor pretending to be a student) but I got very annoyed when they mentioned the fantastic facili-ies (the T was dropped)

Obviously teaching English isn't a high priority!

I get annoyed with the recorded lady on the Orange auto-message who starts off ..

'Hello. Your remaining credi' is ... '

The French orange website homepage has one of the accents on "evenements" going the wrong way. (I know I haven't put any accents on the word at all but that's because the forum puts ? instead).

Wasn't that popularised by New Labour?

I thought that you were "allowed" to use both variations these days..?