More better grammer and speeling please.

[Jdsk]

Yes. Plurals in English are wonderful... as soon as anyone thinks they have a rule or classification the counterexamples pop up. Even with uncountable nouns... as in one of my favourite Ingrid Bergman films!

Jonathan

[simonineaston]

Perhaps there's some logic in the old green-grocer's apostrophe after-all - simple add it when the speaker / writer wishes to indicate more-than-one, so one sheep, several sheep's or one mouse, several mouse's Worth a try, innit?!

[kwackers]

Perhaps there's some logic in the old green-grocer's apostrophe after-all - simple add it when the speaker / writer wishes to indicate more-than-one, so one sheep, several sheep's or one mouse, several mouse's Worth a try, innit?!

Mouse's just sounds wrong, mice sounds right.

Perhaps make the plural of sheep, shipe.
The collective could be called a 'bag' then you could have "a bag of shipe".

Works for me...

[Jdsk]

Shaw thought that errors could be avoided by the opposite solution... abandon all possessive apostrophes.

Jonathan

[Vorpal]

It all comes from having English as a hodge-podge language, and the tendency of languages to simplify over time.

As above English isn't a mishmash or hodge-podge language...it's the vocabulary that has so many origins and influences (and all the richer for it).

Fair enough, though I see the same varied influences in grammar and structure.

[Vorpal]

Shaw thought that errors could be avoided by the opposite solution... abandon all possessive apostrophes.

Jonathan

They only started to distinguish possessive from plural, or at least that's the theory. Other languages with 's' possessive (descended form Old Norse) do not use them, but also do not use 's' plural.

[Jdsk]

A lot of my fellow students come from far flung corners of the world and it is noticeable that they have a much better understanding of their own language's rules of grammar than I of mine. It might be that the fault is mine but conversations with friends and family tend to suggest that our education system still doesn't place a great deal of emphasis on gaining a thorough knowledge of grammar.

There's a lot more in the National Curriculum now, eg:
https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/335190/English_Appendix_2_-_Vocabulary_grammar_and_punctuation.pdf

This whole approach is usually summarised as "fronted adverbials"! The grimace is optional.

And Pinker joins in: "How to kill the English language":
https://spectator.us/topic/kill-english-language-fronted-adverbial/

Jonathan

PS: Theres an all too brief discussion of style guides above. He wrote my favourite recent contribution to the genre:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Sense_of_Style

[Jdsk]

"I've lost my mojo."

1 It isn't MOJO or MoJo.

2 It isn't a mojo. In current English English it's an uncountable noun.

3 It seems to have come to English English from US English from Black US English from an African-American creole. But I don't know from which African language.

4 I've never discovered why the chewy sweets have their name... anyone?

Jonathan

https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/mojo

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mojo_(Afr ... an_culture)

[Jdsk]

Doesn't flag have a lot of meanings?

I think that the symbolic cloth, the indicator and to weaken probably have a common origin.

Iris possibly.

The flat piece of stone might be different, but it does share flatness with the piece of cloth...

Jonathan

[661-Pete]

Doesn't flag have a lot of meanings?

In internet-social-media-speak, "flag" (vb.) can also mean to report a post for some violation. Pre-internet, it also meant to signal an approaching vehicle to stop, e.g. in an emergency. I suppose that goes back to the man-with-red-flag days.

But the English word with the most separate meanings, according to the OED, is 'set'.

[Jdsk]

Doesn't flag have a lot of meanings?

In internet-social-media-speak, "flag" (vb.) can also mean to report a post for some violation. Pre-internet, it also meant to signal an approaching vehicle to stop, e.g. in an emergency. I suppose that goes back to the man-with-red-flag days.

But the English word with the most separate meanings, according to the OED, is 'set'.

Lots of computerish meanings, including in hardware and programming. I'd put them all in indication, with a direct descent from the piece of cloth used as a signal.

Jonathan

PS: Yes. set.

[KTHSullivan]

"I've lost my mojo."

1 It isn't MOJO or MoJo.

2 It isn't a mojo. In current English English it's an uncountable noun.

3 It seems to have come to English English from US English from Black US English from an African-American creole. But I don't know from which African language.

4 I've never discovered why the chewy sweets have their name... anyone?

Jonathan

https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/mojo

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mojo_(Afr ... n_culture)

It's a woody semi-tinny word for pedant.

[kylecycler]

If you've really lost it you won't know what it is.

[661-Pete]

If you've really lost it you won't know what it is.

I did once ask a fellow-forummer (not on this forum) to keep a look-out for my 'sense of humour', which I suspected I'd dropped on the road somewhere between Crawley and Ditchling Beacon. Never found it. But I think I've now got a working replacement. Have I?

[markjohnobrien]

I think I'm cursed with correctness - in spelling and grammar. Can be a disadvantage. One thing I've learned is that pulling someone else up on these matters is usually not a good idea. Especially when regional accents or dialects are involved. It's bound to cause upset.

You may notice that I have a habit of writing sentence fragments. Some would disapprove, but I don't think they're grammatically wrong. But by all means feel free to disagree!

One point: anyone thinking of taking up writing professionally, as a journalist, novelist, or technical author, say, had better get it right. Editors are very unforgiving of bad spelling, grammar, or punctuation.

What's the consensus on the notorious 'Oxford comma' - as in my last sentence?

Good job we’ve never met as I have a strong regional East Midlands accent (which I’m proud of ), didn’t change when I went to a top 5 university, and I loathe superior middle class types who look with disdain on regional dialects and variation.

Written discourse is different: and I both use the Oxford comma and love it as, for me, it adds an element of preciseness.