Grammar/spelling pedants - prepare to cry!

? Tricky things those unrepariable punchers.

Perhaps the Honda garage ought to be investing in a spellchecker or teaching the person doing the invoicing how to use it if they already have one.

I despair, I really do. I oversee a helpdesk as part of my job and the jobs which come through make me torn between wanting to laugh and wanting to cry. "Pleas trace this job up" is a typical example.

It's crazy, it really is - I find myself saying "what do they teach them in schools these days?" but of course most of these sort of errors are made by people who are not school leavers. One of my favourites (?) at the moment is a shop sign on the Gloucester Road in Horfield which says something along the lines of "beer's, cider's, wine's, newspaper's and cigarettes." Why? Why all the apostrophes and then the illogical lack of apostrophe for cigarettes? What did cigarettes do to not deserve an apostrophe??

As an aside, my other pet hate is the use of the word "fayre" when they actually mean "fare" (as in food, not a bus ticket!).

I know MITG, there's no logic to it at all- they'll happily spell some things with and some things without an apostrophe.

Other things that currently drive me mad are the dropped "ed" for past tense, e.g. "I text her" "pickle onion" "mash potato". And at the risk of making myself very unpopular on BT, why on earth do people insist on using "feint" instead of "faint"? Why can't people speak English anymore?

Go and console yourself with a nice read of "Mother Tongue" by Bill Bryson if you haven't already read it - it confirms what we already know - we are right!?

So glad it is not just me, poor spelling and punctuation drives me mad, the latest ones I have seen was 'Pansy's for sale' and a very posh sign painted on a gate stating 'NO DELIVERY'S'. What is the world coming to!!!

I refuse to use 'text' as a verb - it sounds so ugly and clunky. I prefer 'I sent her a text'.

As for 'Why can't people speak English anymore?', it's not the spoken word that's the problem, it's because we see a lot more print, I think. Many of the errors (apostrophes aside) are because accent and dialect forms have bled into written English; non-standard is often okay for (informal) spoken contexts but not written ones. 'Could of' is a good example of what I mean - 'could've' SOUNDS like that doesn't it, so people write or type incorrectly because they haven't thought about the standard form they really need for writing.

Ooooh, the faint/feint thing makes me angry. As does people mixing up discreet and discrete. I'm currently getting ever so annoyed by my box of Boots breast pads that claim that they are "slim and discrete". I want to boycott them as a point of principle, but they're good and cheap, so I don't

Did I tell you about the horror that nearly caused me to have a car crash recently?

On a locksmith's van:

'Lost You're Key's?'

<shudder>

There's a builder's sign on a house I regularly walk past which states "no job to small"

I've stopped shopping in PC World since I kept spotting huge great big signs saying things like "hard drive's"

I spotted an error on a Tesco banner outside their store the other day too, but can't remember what it was now, think it may have been the to/too thing again - it was a large printed corporate banner, not something just the local store had knocked up.

"

lose/loose makes me angry - it makes my blood boil when I see "my trousers feel loser" or "i really want to loose weight" ?

Our local chemist had a huge banner in the window advertising a "pefume sale" these were proper printed banners, wouldn't you think someone would check the spelling on a printed poster.

Can I add to the mix, my recent termination letter, asking me to leave the office immediately, due to the "senative nature" of the site. I'll leave you to make your own judgements on that one. ?

Another misuse of English that drives me mad is "new innovation".

Yes, that sort of thing bugs me too.

There's a very, very posh new house in the village the ILs live in, with a very very posh carved stone name plate set into the wall which says "Smithsons Cottage"* and it drives me crazy. Did they run out of money before the mason could carve the apostrophe? The times I've been tempted to go down there with a chisel. I content myself by hoping the metal thieves come round again and steal their poncy copper guttering. Cretins.

*names changed to protect the cretinous innocent

"Fairly unique" is a particular bugbear of mine

Either it's unique, or it isn't!

I've just remembered the last time I was in a motorway services there was a big printed sign in the shop saying "2009 Diarys' reduced to £1.25" - that one's wronger than a wrong thing!

Lose/loose drives me batty too.

Something that I have noticed a lot recently is people saying 'I done/seen' instead of 'I have done/have seen' or 'I did/saw' etc.

At work last week, a memo was sent out informing us that the 'new stationery' was being distributed. Is it new, is it not new, are we calling it new but it isn't really new??

As a professional writer, my real bugbear is mistakes being introduced into my copy by subeditors - who are supposed to correct my work!

I generally don't compare the final printed version with my original copy (because that way lies madness), but I couldn't believe I'd got a word like 'pretentions' (sic) wrong - so I dug out my original piece, and... well, I hadn't. But as far as the outside world is concerned, I had, because it went out under my name! ?

My bug bear is people using the phrase "rising to a crescendo" - mainly used by football commentators.

Orly Bird - must be something about termination letters, my H's was terrible, including several words in German!

Woolies in Staines used to have a big sign denoting their 'Confectionary' section. I thought it must be a one off error, but I am so sad that I went into Woolies on Finchley Rd to check and they had the same sign up there.

Forty and Fourty is another

?

There is a shop nearby with another apostrophe abomination: "tables, chairs, beds, sofa's" Aaargh!

I hate when people use brought instead of bought and the lose/loose thing gets on my nerves, too.

May I submit the two BBC commentators who, during the rugby said at different times "I am sat with..." or "I was sat"

I frequently pass a flower shop called

"Evelyns Flower's Daly"

By lucky hap, the final printed version of one of my latest pieces landed on my desk this morning, revealing that I used the word 'coruscating' correctly - in the sense of meaning "brilliant", "sparkling" or "scintillating".

I honestly don't know what people who misuse it think it means, but it seems to have mutated into something along the lines of "fierce" or "aggressive" - as in "a coruscating attack". As the late Miles Kington put it:

Another word I go out of my way to use correctly is 'enormity' - which actually means "an outrage", not "something of substantial size". Of course, the holy grail here is to find something of substantial size that's also outrageous - so you can legitimately call, say, that new West Bromwich arts centre an enormity secure in the knowledge that everyone reading it will understand at least something of what you're trying to get across while also keeping grammar pedants happy.