English grammar murdered on QVC web site

[BenFongTorres]

My grammar is not perfect but I do my best,sometimes I get a little trigger happy with the commas.

My personal bugbear though is when people get 'your and you're' mixed up.

 

[brenny]

For me , the whole issue is meaningless, Not because I hold the views of the posters unimportant , but as some of you may know Im quite badkt Dyslexic , I can read really well , infact I taught myself at age 2 , but spelling , grammer and words that have 2 spellings for different meanings are an unknown world to me. The best description is , Its like being colour blind to the make up of language . It just dosnt register with me , Punctuation is just what others do . I do try and put in comas but its a guess and as for apostrophes they are something that happens to other people , Even spell check facilities are of very limited use as I often cant tell which given alternative is the one I want . LOL

 

[BenFongTorres]

For me , the whole issue is meaningless, Not because I hold the views of the posters unimportant , but as some of you may know Im quite badkt Dyslexic , I can read really well , infact I taught myself at age 2 , but spelling , grammer and words that have 2 spellings for different meanings are an unknown world to me. The best description is , Its like being colour blind to the make up of language . It just dosnt register with me , Punctuation is just what others do . I do try and put in comas but its a guess and as for apostrophes they are something that happens to other people , Even spell check facilities are of very limited use as I often cant tell which given alternative is the one I want . LOL

I have the same problem,only with numbers and maths.It's called discalculia...or summat,lol........all numbers might as well be ancient Martian scroll for me.....however I do know my times table up to 12 so i'm a functioning innumerate....but anything like algebra,calculous,trigonometry....forget it! My head explodes.

 

[Nicky-j]

For me , the whole issue is meaningless, Not because I hold the views of the posters unimportant , but as some of you may know Im quite badkt Dyslexic , I can read really well , infact I taught myself at age 2 , but spelling , grammer and words that have 2 spellings for different meanings are an unknown world to me. The best description is , Its like being colour blind to the make up of language . It just dosnt register with me , Punctuation is just what others do . I do try and put in comas but its a guess and as for apostrophes they are something that happens to other people , Even spell check facilities are of very limited use as I often cant tell which given alternative is the one I want . LOL

I think you get a free pass on that then! But you should know, you write very nicely indeed!

 

[brenny]

I think you get a free pass on that then! But you should know, you write very nicely indeed!

Thank you very much NJ , thats really kind of you .

 

[brenny]

I have the same problem,only with numbers and maths.It's called discalculia...or summat,lol........all numbers might as well be ancient Martian scroll for me.....however I do know my times table up to 12 so i'm a functioning innumerate....but anything like algebra,calculous,trigonometry....forget it! My head explodes.

Got that as well .LOL Its like they fall through a whole in your head isnt it . :flower:

 

[Artemis]

What drives me bonkers is the misuse of apostrophes in plurals, they appear like a plague of tadpoles all over the place, shop signs (Vegetables'), menus, posters etc. Like Plint the ex-teacher in me comes out and I could run amok with a red pen!

I feel like this too and I'm not a schoolteacher. At least I don't get assaulted with that, here, although I'm sure there are many examples of Greek bad grammar which I am not aware of!

Things which really annoy me in the U.K. are 'Nite' for night on many gig posters etc. and 'strawberrys' and cream which featured annually on the menu board of a local hostelry. The spoken language evolving doesn't bother me too much, as it always has but that doesn't justify bad spelling and migrating apostrophes in my (grammar) book.........:wink2:

 

[BenFongTorres]

Got that as well .LOL Its like they fall through a whole in your head isnt it . :flower:

Wow,you've got the double whammy..you should consider yourself special then,lol.

Funnily,enough one of the brightest men I ever knew and he was a millionaire businessman could not read or write and I didn't find out until after a month of working for him,he had all these little tricks to hide it,twas quite amusing really.
But it just goes to show that when certain bits of your brain are lacking there are other bits which will step to the fore if you're really determined.

 

[sillysausage]

Hi :hi:,
I find rogue apostrophes and wrong spellings on posters, menus etc extremely irritating. :headbang: It must be due to all my years of marking when I was a teacher, before I retired. I get this almost uncontrollable urge to correct the errors with a red pen......but I don't, of course!

I find pretentious French menus riddled with mistakes equally annoying. If you are going to use a foreign language on your menu, then you should have it checked out by a proficient or native speaker of the language in question, before having your menu printed, IMHO.:taphead:

I completely agree, I feel the same with Italian menus... I think mistakes make me think of the restaurant as pretentious and not one bit 'authentic'!!:flower:

 

[argeybargey]

My grammar is not perfect but I do my best,sometimes I get a little trigger happy with the commas.

My personal bugbear though is when people get 'your and you're' mixed up.

and should of, would of, could of

 

[brenny]

and should of, would of, could of

:sad::sad::sad: lol xx

 

[BenFongTorres]

and should of, would of, could of

Give me some examples of the appropriate use of each please just so I can see where I might have gone wrong in the past...although I don't think I have problem with that lot.

I digress for a moment but this kind of ties in with the thread topic but I recently came across a list of some of the most missplet words in the English language(ROFTL,i'm not even sure I spelled missplet correctly)...anyway here they are,there is one on this list I have been getting wrong for years but the others I could spell at gun-point.

The words on the right are the incorrect spellings........*DEFINITELY* is the one i've botched for many a year,Oh I think I have gotten unnecessary wrong on a number of occasions also,but other than that i'm not doing too badly.

Definitely(definately)
Sacrilegious(Sacreligious)
Indict(Indite)
Manoeuvre(Maneouvre)
Bureaucracy(Beaurocracy)
Broccoli(Brocolli)
Phlegm(Phleghm)
Prejudice(Predjudice)
Consensus(Conscensus)
Unnecessary(Unecessary)

 

[fairynuff]

don't you mean shoulda, woulda, coulda Argey? :cheeky::tongue2::tongue2:

 

[BenFongTorres]

don't you mean shoulda, woulda, coulda Argey? :cheeky::tongue2::tongue2:

Tee hee:4:

 

[Artemis]

and should of, would of, could of

..........and were and where or their and there......arggghhhh!

Incidentally, I'm not disparaging people with genuine problems. One of my daughters is severely dyslexic. Most of my children attended a Primary school which valued expression above accuracy and it took much hard work to undo their methods.:sad:

 

[Ballerina]

I really like the English language, It is not my first language and I spoke very little until I was 14. However, I did not find it very easy to master and still make some gross errors with spelling and punctuation. I did achieve a grade B at O' level but that was on my second attempt. Very embarrassing!

I think it is very important to preserve the English language. It has been bastardized, particularly by the Americans and a laissez-faire attitude by the general populus. If left unchallenged (grammar, unchallenged / un-challenged?), the language will be eroded away and I think this would be a shame.

Inge x

 

[mariecat]

Yes, re the QVC website: should have read, something like, "... which, when applied WILL GIVE YOU a powerful... ". Could be a Friday afternoon slip-up, but haven't checked the site closely to see if it's an endemic problem.

I don't know if they teach grammar in schools, actually; they should though; maybe they do at posh schools... . As a lifelong 'reader' myself (who didn't go to a posh school), I found I picked up grammar from my reading, but don't seem to have learned much more than the most rudimentary stuff at school (like: a noun is person, place or thing; a verb is an action word... ); I couldn't technically parse sentences until I did the subject at university.

 

[Artemis]

Yes, re the QVC website: should have read, something like, "... which, when applied WILL GIVE YOU a powerful... ". Could be a Friday afternoon slip-up, but haven't checked the site closely to see if it's an endemic problem.

I don't know if they teach grammar in schools, actually; they should though; maybe they do at posh schools... . As a lifelong 'reader' myself (who didn't go to a posh school), I found I picked up grammar from my reading, but don't seem to have learned much more than the most rudimentary stuff at school (like: a noun is person, place or thing; a verb is an action word... ); I couldn't technically parse sentences until I did the subject at university.

I still can't! I could read really well when I started school and they weren't sure what to do with me when others in my class were learning the alphabet so they gave me the run of the library. I was spotted by the headmaster who decided I had to have some sort of structured learning so I was put in with the juniors upstairs, for English. Unfortunately, they'd done parsing already so I never got the hang of it.
When we were learning French, I got an English grammar book out of the library and tried to teach myself grammar but my brain just wouldn't hold on to it, though I did manage to learn the language. Now that I'm learning Greek, I have a teacher who knows better than to mention the aurist subjunctive or whatever because I lapse into a sort of fugue state. I get by with a crib sheet my hubby made for me that explains parts of speech in words of one syllable because he understands the way my mind works.Bless him, he has a lot to put up with......

 

[mariecat]

Sounds like you were overlooked a little in the early days of your education, shame on them! (I sometimes wonder if I missed out being taught grammar as a child because I went to a lot of different schools - my Dad's job meant we moved a lot.) Remember it's never too late to learn - but then I think you know that!

Good luck with your studies Artemis - sounds like your hubby has a heart of gold too!

 

[sillysausage]

I was looking again at the product description for item 227939 which inspired this thread and I've noticed another quite remarkable mistake, the item title reads "Elemis tri-enzyme resurfing gel mask". Not bad, is it, managing to pack all of this in just a few lines...:tongue2: