BlogDay 2008

Jeff Pulver is encouraging us to take part in Blogday 2008 and I figure why not?  It’s a great way for us all to check out different blogs and maybe learn a thing or two.  So here are my five blogs (non-PR)  to celebrate BlogDay.
1. Special Little People provides aromatherapy products for children. Blogger Janine [...]

Retailer commits apostrophe crime

Image via Wikipedia
Recently returned from London two traumas affronted me: first, my daughter’s UFO broke, so had to be returned; second, and more importantly, when returning it to the store whence it came, Harrods, I realised the world’s most famous store has lost its apostrophe!
Diligently adding the apostrophe throughout the refund request letter, it [...]

Prof ses speling dont mater

You don’t have to agree with someone to admire them. It is with just such a sentiment I regard Dr Ken Smith who suggested certain key words, often misspelt by his university students, should be accepted as ‘variants’ and their misspelling overlooked.
You have to admire him for coming up with such a bad suggestion with [...]

Number v amount

The ‘number’ of mistakes I encounter relating to the bleedin’ apostrophe, for example, or the ‘amount’ of ignorance there is in the use of common English grammar, is a good sentence to illustrate the use of two words - ‘number’ and ‘amount’ - that are, so often, mixed up. ‘Number’ relates to specifics, ‘amount’ is [...]

Fewer errors means less time fixing

Image by Getty Images via Daylife
Apparently, doctors who spend three hours a week playing video games made 37 percent fewer mistakes in laparoscopic surgery found researchers in 2004. You could be forgiven for fixating on the fact that they make any mistakes at all, never mind in over a third of cases! But this is [...]

Grammarman!

For the grammar-obsessed among us, all hail the arrival of Grammarman! Brian Boyd, an English teacher with a penchant for comic drawings and good grammar, came up with the idea of a superhero intent on fighting crimes against grammar to help teach his students in Thailand.
Apparently Grammarman was sent to planet Earth as a baby [...]

Apostrophe crime: summer’s day

It’s a lovely summer’s day – well, actually, it isn’t – it’s overcast, spitting with rain and July. But I use this sentence to illustrate another apostrophe crime. Sorry to go on about it, but every day I get emails that betray the fact people just don’t get it.
Today, for example, I received this within [...]

Effect v affect

After a lifetime of being a stickler about getting it right, and a haranguing harridan when people have the temerity to get it wrong – for example. to mix up their ‘theirs’ with their ‘theres’ and, what is worse, to get apostrophes wrong (someone emailed me its’ today – twice in one press release – [...]