A pedant writes....

[Norm]

There used to be a sign at the entrance to a car park near me that read : "Trespassers wil be persecuted."

Might as well, as you can't prosecute them. But "trespassers will be subject to a civil action" really doesn't have the same impact.

We had, a long time ago, "Trespassers will be electrocuted" in a field with an electric fence.

 

[asterix]

I don't understand why people get so worked up about grammar and punctuation: apparently Feedback on the Beeb could fill an afternoon every week with complaints on that sole topic. There is often an undercurrent of middle class snobbery, a ludicrous conviction that bad spelling is lazy, ignorant and sure evidence of moral turpitude.

The purpose of language is to communicate, and if the meaning is clear is the form so important? Don't forget that these 'rules' are no more than a very recent consensus on what formal speech or text should be. They don't apply in other contexts and in any case language is a living, moving thing.

Excellently put. I can't see a single mistake.

(BTW I tend to disagree but I don't write to Feedback)

 

[Dayvo]

I don't understand why people get so worked up about grammar and punctuation: apparently Feedback on the Beeb could fill an afternoon every week with complaints on that sole topic. There is often an undercurrent of middle class snobbery, a ludicrous conviction that bad spelling is lazy, ignorant and sure evidence of moral turpitude.

The purpose of language is to communicate, and if the meaning is clear, is the form so important? Don't forget that these 'rules' are no more than a very recent consensus on what formal speech or text should be. They don't apply in other contexts and in any case language is a living, moving thing.

Excellently put. I can't see a single mistake.

Almost! The red comma was omitted!

 

[meenaghman]

On his 70th birthday, a man got a gift certificate from his wife. The certificate paid for a visit to a medicine man living on the Pima Indian reservation who was rumored to have a wonderful cure for erectile dysfunction. After being persuaded, he drove to the reservation, handed the
certificate to the medicine man and nervously awaited what would happen next.

The old man slowly and methodically produced a potion, handed it to him, and with a grip on his shoulder, warned, "This is powerful medicine and it must be respected. You take only a teaspoonful and then say '1-2-3.' When you do that, you will become more manly than you have ever been in your life, and you can perform as long as you want."

He was encouraged. As he walked away, he turned and asked, "How do I stop the action of the medicine?" "Your partner must say '1-2-3-4,' he responded. But when she does, the medicine will not work again until the next full moon."

He was very eager to see if it worked so he went home, showered, shaved, fluffed up the three remaining hairs he had on his head, put on lots of cologne, took a spoonful of the medicine, and then invited his wife to join him in the bedroom. When she came in, he took off his clothes and said, "1-2-3!"

Immediately, the glory of his manhood expanded to fulfill both of their longings. His wife was so excited that she began ripping off her clothes. When almost fully disrobed, she asked, "Honey, what was the 1-2-3 for?"



And that, boys and girls, is why we should NEVER end our sentences with a preposition! --- Otherwise you will end up with a dangling participle!

 

[Dan B]

The purpose of language is to communicate, and if the meaning is clear is the form so important?

There is an unexamined assumption in this sentence. Personally I find that the meaning is clearer when the form follows accepted practices: if a sentence parses ambiguously or I have to insert my own punctuation, I cannot read it as quickly. I assume that the same is true for other people. It follows that as a writer I should make the extra effort to write grammatically instead of requiring my readers to make the extra effort to decode my non-standard utterances. After all, there are more of them than there are of me.

You might say that I give the lie to my own argument by using long words and rhetorical flourishes where shorter words and plain speaking would do. Well, yeah. But I do that for fun, not from laziness.

(Some grammatical distinctions of past days are truly outmoded and there I would agree that the meaning is clear even if the form is "wrong". If nobody else stills know the difference between "shall" and "will" either, there's really not much point in getting it correct because nobody reading will suffer the jarring sense of dislocation anyway. But I still will not support you if your goal is a descent into txtspk)

 

[Dan B]

To be fair, signwriters are just making what the client has told them to.

Signwriters are in the business of communication. The client is quite likely in some other business. That makes the signwriter the expert and in an appropriate position to advise the client, not just do what they were told.

If you learnt of a neophyte cyclist who went to a bike shop with a flat tyre asking for a new wheel to be installed, would you expect the bike shop to do what the client had told them to do, or to advise them that they actually needed a puncture repair?

 

[meenaghman]

Aoccdrnig to a rscheearch at Cmabrigde Uinervtisy, it deosn't mttaer in waht oredr the ltteers in a wrod are, the olny iprmoetnt tihng is taht the frist and lsat ltteer be at the rghit pclae. The rset can be a toatl mses and you can sitll raed it wouthit porbelm. Tihs is bcuseae the huamn mnid deos not raed ervey lteter by istlef, but the wrod as a wlohe.



atllucay it wsna't a sbujcet of rscheearch but is an itnenert haox. Slitl smees to wrok.

 

[Rhythm Thief]

Aoccdrnig to a rscheearch at Cmabrigde Uinervtisy, it deosn't mttaer in waht oredr the ltteers in a wrod are, the olny iprmoetnt tihng is taht the frist and lsat ltteer be at the rghit pclae. The rset can be a toatl mses and you can sitll raed it wouthit porbelm. Tihs is bcuseae the huamn mnid deos not raed ervey lteter by istlef, but the wrod as a wlohe.



atllucay it wsna't a sbujcet of rscheearch but is an itnenert haox. Slitl smees to wrok.

It was a subject of research - apparently - but the second part of the conclusion is nearly always omitted when this is quoted. That is, that it's only possible to recognise the words in the example you've quoted because we do have a standardised system of spelling.

 

[John Ponting]

Excellently put. I can't see a single mistake.

(BTW I tend to disagree but I don't write to Feedback)

Almost! The red comma was omitted!

Or should the comma after 'communicate' be moved to after 'and' to match the new red comma ?

 

[JamesAC]

Be wary of US sites. Their grammatical usage is often different to British English, not simply their spelling. And you are right - someone there needs to realise that giving twenty examples of something doesn't make it twenty times as clear.

different from

tch tch

 

[BrumJim]

Aoccdrnig to a rscheearch at Cmabrigde Uinervtisy, it deosn't mttaer in waht oredr the ltteers in a wrod are, the olny iprmoetnt tihng is taht the frist and lsat ltteer be at the rghit pclae. The rset can be a toatl mses and you can sitll raed it wouthit porbelm. Tihs is bcuseae the huamn mnid deos not raed ervey lteter by istlef, but the wrod as a wlohe.



atllucay it wsna't a sbujcet of rscheearch but is an itnenert haox. Slitl smees to wrok.

Yes, but stuff this sentence through Babel Fish to translate it to French, and see what comes out. Biggest translation problems that I have is when a word is missing a letter. Not having knowledge of the language, I cannot see which letter is missing, and therefore have a pig of a job trying to work out what the word means. Which is invariably key to the whole sentence.

 

[Arch]

Or should the comma after 'communicate' be moved to after 'and' to match the new red comma ?

I was going to say that! I chickened out, thinking I'd be laughed at for uber-pedantry.

I like to see things 'right', especially in official contexts. If a friend had emailed saying "There's lots of places we can go to", I'd never have mentioned it, but when it's a public display, I think it ought to be right. After all, it doesn't cost any more to be right, or take any more time.

Yes, we can scan text and make up mentally for all sorts of mistakes - the human brain is an amazing thing. But it would be nice not to have to.