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[partlycloudy]

[Elpachio]

Either I have to assume that you, too, are pulling our collective leg, Elpachio, or I have to wonder about the accreditation of the college or university which awarded you that BA in English. :P

What's that supposed to mean you cheeky swine? My English grammar and vocabulary is faultless. I received my 2:1 degree at the University in Charles Dickens' home town.
And it amazes me how many people refer to years with an apostrophe, e.g. In the 1970's.
The apostrophe is not necessary because it doesn't belong to 1970. It is the plural of the 70s so it does not require an apostrophe. That gets my goat.

[jerry]

By no means faultless. You should have written: My English grammar and vocabulary are faultless. (Because the subject is plural.)

[Tara Emory]

Having worked in the publishing business for part of my life, I think it just boils down to not proofreading. If I'm just writing on a internet forum, I'm not going to be too anal about it.. Typos are a little less forgivable on web pages, but what really irks me is when actual places (in the real world) manage to screw things up.
We have a bunch of gas stations around here that have these stickers on the gas pumps.. Some examples:

Drive off's will be prosecuted

-There seems to be a whole generation of people in the US who don't know how to use the apostrophe, and somehow these errors make it all the way to the sticker printers. My guess is that the stickers were printed up in Hong Kong.

Another one of my favorites is the sticker that says "With MTBE". Yes, it's in quotes.. Who said this famous quote? Mark Twain? Josef Stalin? I'm dying to know who's pushing this gasoline additive.

But the best use of "Engrish" I have seen was on a package of Chinese -made AAA batteries.. They were called "Dinacells" and they looked like Duracells. But somewhere on the back it had this wonderful warning. "Do not decompose the battery!" Wow.. I didn't know you could do that to a battery.

So, occasional typos means we're just lazy (I know I don't proofread very well), and forgivable on the net. I certainly don't check to see if my sentences are parallel or whatever.. I use the three dots after my sentences... I like to, becuase it gives a very "stream of consicousness" feel to things.. But when bad grammar makes it all the way to painted signs, then I guess you can just blame folks to whom English isn't their primary language. Personally I'm more annoyed by people who substitute "ppl" for "people". How much to do bet that People magazine will change their name to "PPL"?

-Tara

[Tara Emory]

Well, realgirls- all those examples are WRONG! I just ran into Danielle Fox recently and she didn't say anything about going out with anyone named Mike.

Tara

PS: What bothers me even more than users of "ppl" is anyone who throws around the term "gurl" Great, let's all re-badge transgendered people something that is one letter off from "hurl". And it's so, like intentionally masculine it just makes me thing of hairy cross-dressers. God I hope it doesn't catch on. Anyone who joins my yahoo group and uses that awful term automatically gets put into a pile of membership requests that I mull over for a couple of weeks. I'm okay with "t-girl" or just "girl". I'll take "tranny" in a pinch, but don't ever call me a "gurl". Which reminds me, what the hell is a "boi"?

[partlycloudy]

if anybody's bored http://www.engrish.com/

Q. What is Engrish?

A. Engrish can be simply defined as the humorous English mistakes that appear in Japanese advertising and product design.

[Ecstatic]

Either I have to assume that you, too, are pulling our collective leg, Elpachio, or I have to wonder about the accreditation of the college or university which awarded you that BA in English. :P

What's that supposed to mean you cheeky swine? My English grammar and vocabulary is faultless. I received my 2:1 degree at the University in Charles Dickens' home town.
And it amazes me how many people refer to years with an apostrophe, e.g. In the 1970's.
The apostrophe is not necessary because it doesn't belong to 1970. It is the plural of the 70s so it does not require an apostrophe. That gets my goat.

First of all, Elpachio, I was assuming that you were speaking tongue in cheek, so there was no insult or offense intended. Secondly, here's what you wrote:

YOu cant count me either, Im the editor of an international business magazine and I have a BA degree in English Literature and an A grade A-level in English language.............lol.

If we deconstruct that sentence, we find the following errors in typography, spelling, and grammar:

YOu: should be You
cant: should be can't
Im: should be I'm

Additionally, the comma following either renders this sentence a comma splice (two independent clauses joined by a comma and no coordinating conjunction).

In your reply, as Jerry noted, you commit a subject-verb agreement error (grammar and vocabulary, being two things, require a plural verb).

And why the need for a personal insult in your rebuttal ("you cheeky swine")? In what way did I earn that disrespect?

Regarding the apostrophe issue, what we see here is a distinction between British and American English usage. As far as I know, in England, where apostrophes are used to indicate either contraction or possession, such apostrophe use is considered superfluous, if not entirely incorrect. However, it is standard and correct in American usage. To be thorough, it's optional, and either 1970s or 1970's is correct. Sometimes the apostrophe is appropriately used to indicate plurality which might otherwise be obscure: for instance, in the expression "dot your i's and cross your t's" (it isn't "dot your is" and, especially in this forum, we should be careful to not "cross our ts" :P ). Of course, this could also be written as "dot your "i"s, but that is considered awkward at least in American usage.

For what it's worth, I earned my BA in English at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst with a 3.87 GPA and summa cum laude status, and my MA in English at Colorado State University with a 4.0 GPA and Colorado State Fellowship.

Tara: love those photos! You know how to make a point. I'll be careful not to refer to you as a "gurl" (how about "grrl"? Or is that just "riot grrls"?).

[GroobySteven]

I think we're really finding out who is anal in this form and who just likes arse!
seanchai

[Ecstatic]

I think we're really finding out who is anal in this form and who just likes arse!
seanchai

Well, anal-ytic anyway, seanchai.

[Elpachio]

If you take the word "swine" to be an insult you are rather sad. Swine is actually a term of endearment. If I was insulting you I would have used a far nastier word.

And well done both of you for spotting the deliberate grammatical mistakes in my posts. You have both passed the test. Would you like to be my part time sub-editor on my international B2B magazine with 30,000 readers?