Member |
 Following on from the "fewer/less/up to" debate sparked by Tesco the BBC news magazine has this list of submitted "errors" that annoy people. There are twenty in the list and most of them are the kind of common grumbles and grouses that we hear every day. The trouble is that by my count at least 14 of the 20 listed are either not errors at all or are, at best differences of opinion about style and unrelated to grammar. I'll leave it to others to work out which six I think may have a point, though not necessarilly a grammatical one.  "No man but a blockhead ever wrote except for money." Samuel Johnson. | ||
|
Member |
Incorrect use of reflexives make my blood boil. How about incorrect subject-verb concordance? It's like shooting fish in a toilet bowl. Me thinks these pervy presciptos'll be the end of the language as wot she's known. —Ceci n'est pas un seing. | |||
|
Member |
I love that particular phrase!  Build a man a fire and he's warm for a day. Set a man on fire and he's warm for the rest of his life. | |||
|
Member |
Increasing the ambient temperature to 212°F (100°C) literally makes his blood boil. | |||
|
| Member |
It's nice that an editor has quoted Fowler debunking some of the "errors". | |||
|
| Member |
I don't ever recall hearing this distinction in US English. Due to is constantly used, owing to, never. But there is a parallel phenomenon here. In most cases where "owing to" would be used in the UK, "because of" is used here. Recently, though, I've noticed that it is increasingly common to hear "due to" in constructions in which "because of" used to be universal: The game was called due to rain. | |||
|
| Member |
I don't ever recall hearing it in UK English apart from in places like this where someone is trying to tell me there is a difference. There may be slightly varying levels of formality but both forms are common enough in standard English with either nouns or verbs following. "No man but a blockhead ever wrote except for money." Samuel Johnson. | |||
|
Member |
I thought this comment from Fowler's was priceless: Since the reign of King Alfred?  | |||
|
| Member |
Wide Wide Words
| |||
|
| Member |
There are many Old English examples of none inflected for the plural, for instance King Ælfred, Boethius de consolatione philosophiæ. XIV, 2 ⁊ þa ungesceadƿisan neotena ne ƿilniaþ nanes oðres feos. "while the irrational cattle are desirous of no other wealth" But I couldn't find an Old English instance of none as the subject of a plural verb. I found an example from 1300: South English Legendary: Thomas Becket, Archbishop of Canterbury 1182: His limes al-so he bi-heold, hou faire heo weren and freo, Þe hondene faire and longe fingres, fairore ne miȝten none beo. "He also beheld his limbs, how fair and free they were, the fair hands and long fingers, none could be fairer." | |||
|
Copyright © 2002-12