July 2007
Racist grammar Vs new dialects
While perusing SPOGG I found a very interesting post discussing whether or not received pronunciation and standardised grammar are racist.Apparently "Ebonics", and the more PC term, "African American Vernacular English" (AAVE) are terms to describe the way some groups of black Americans speak the English ...
Fail to punctuate, win six grand
Last week, a former project manager at Aberdeen City Council was awarded damages after a tribunal agreed that he had been unfairly dismissed.David Moxey was employed to encourage participation in sport amongst youths in the Granite City, which presumably meant hanging around outside chip shops trying to ...
That is so random!
Am I going mad? Has there been a global announcement that I have missed regarding a change in meaning of the word 'random'? Why do I seem to be the only one who minds when people describe events as "random" when they are, in fact, anything but random?This ...
Typography Part 2
We covered the basics a few posts ago, so let's move on to some more detail.There are many common typographical crimes, but one that irks me more than most is the brutal warping, squashing and stretching of type on the likes of signage and promotional 'literature'.eg:...
Smug is good.
This clip was sent into us by Nigel in London.Obviously we're big fans of Stephen Fry here at GrammarBlog and in this sketch I love the way Fry revels in the smugness of ...
Should of, would of, could of…
When I get the time, I'll write a proper post on this with references and everything. But for now I simply want to voice my displeasure at receiving the following sentence in a work email:I guess that's something we should of considered at the timeUrgh. Writing 'should've' is fine, ...
Apostrophe Abuse in Signage - Part 4
Bridgeton - European City of Apostrophe Abuse 2006, originally uploaded by dseang. ...
Calm down, take a deep breath and count to 10.
Recently seen on a friend's Facebook wall:AAAAAARRRGH! It makes me want to break something.I don't know why but I expect more from Facebook users than ...
Get Involved
Sometimes our quest to protect grammar requires action, not words. Which is satisfyingly ironic I suppose.Restaurant menus are not massively verbose tomes. Nor – as the food-snobs among you are doubtless aware – should they ever be. Whilst dining recently in the comfortable but contrived surroundings of Newcastle ...
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