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 [...]
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Filed under: writing
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 [...]
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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 [...]
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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 [...]
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The Apprentice is over, long live the queen (Lee Mc that is). Of course he won because, despite lying about his university credentials on his CV and misspelling ‘tomorrow’, he reminded Sir Alan of himself, and who better to promote than someone in Sir Alan’s own image?
Sorry, Lee didn’t ‘lie’ but said he ‘misconstrued information’which [...]
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Filed under: Media, public relations
Never in the field of human grammar has so much attention been paid to one apostrophe as in the storm of debate surrounding National Singles’ Day.
The question of where the apostrophe should go on the card to celebrate being single designed by one of the teams competing in UK’s The Apprentice led to a three-hour [...]
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Filed under: public relations
Obviously using the right language always matters, but as Peter comments here, ‘why write two words when you can write one’.
Grammar is important, but if a journalist were to reject a news release because of one little error, I would think that more him foolish then the person who wrote it in the [...]
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Filed under: public relations
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