For when I find glaring mistakes people make in English that make me laugh. It’s fussy, anally retentive and mean, but since when were those reasons not to do something?
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June 06, 2008 • 7:26 am
Who’s seen this in emails?
..
Yes, that’s right I’m talking about aborted ellipses. Also this:
…..
Is this a super ellipsis, or a normal one with an aborted one attached?
Hey, important question..who’s seen the stapler?
What did you mean to do? Did you end that first sentence twice, or did you insert a dramatic pause after drawing our attention [...]
May 02, 2008 • 9:14 am
Today I replied to an email saying, “It was I who phoned you earlier in the week.”
Did you spot the best thing ever? No? Well I can’t say I’m surprised. You see, folks, I used the correct pronoun. I could have written “It was me who phoned”, which would have been more appropriate given the [...]
September 21, 2007 • 9:48 am
Check this out, from a comment left on a blog I was reading recently:
nothing about security … ???
that puts me off a bit …
since my blog can be hacked into very easily …
but i will make sure i upgrade …
thanks for sharing this …
appreciated …
Some people need to just not use ellipses. Just point blank [...]
February 21, 2007 • 12:53 pm
What do you do with the verb “to log in” — specifically the preposition part?
“You are logging into <whatever>”
versus
“You are logging in to <whatever>”.
Does this mean there are two verbs, “to log into” and “to log in”?
Mayhap we will never know, my friends. Mayhap we will never know.
:(
December 05, 2006 • 12:43 pm
I love it when I get emails from “john smith” or “nicola phillips”. Where are the capital letters?
Who cares for informal emails, but what if you were writing to an employer or something? It doesn’t look very good. Learn to use the shift key, it takes the least amount of effort when you’re setting up [...]
October 11, 2006 • 1:24 am
Something I have seen on many (well, two) blogs recently is the use of a question mark right in the middle of a sentence. It’s usually done in an attempt to give a dramatic pause or something, but using a question mark in this way is like using a chain saw to open your mail, [...]
July 06, 2006 • 7:37 am
A friend and I were talking about old books, specifically how they write “to-day” and “to-morrow”, all hyphenated like that, and also how they blank out place names. Like, “He lived in the fair city of B——, in the county of S———”. Quite pointless.
Anyway, I also complained of the fact that they didn’t really ever [...]
June 22, 2006 • 7:33 pm
… the losses that matter are semantic losses, not grammatical losses
From Begging the Question
How beautifully sane!
April 20, 2006 • 1:07 pm
While I heartily enjoy correcting people’s grammar and laughing at spelling mistakes, just like any good Englishman should, I do find a few of the rules of English grammar a little annoying. Namely, the rule against split infinitives and the rule against putting prepositions at the end of the sentence.
The infinitive is that form of [...]
April 04, 2006 • 8:05 pm
Writing for the web is generally more successful when it’s informal, that’s why blogs are so popular. Formal writing tends to bore users unless it’s about something of interest. For instance, how many people actually read documents entitled “Terms and Conditions” without falling asleep half-way through?
But an informal style doesn’t mean you get to be [...]