If it ends in a Y...

[binley100]

Hmmmm.........sow and sew

[reetnproper]

A couple of years ago I had an online debate about punctuation, grammar and spelling with a secondary school geography teacher, who tried to persuade me that giving a pupil an A* for a piece of worked which contained grammatical AND spelling errors was perfectly acceptable, providing the essence of the work was correct .

I vividly remember getting work back from ALL my teachers with, where necessary, red pen (now no longer used, so she told me, because it undermines the confidence of todays youngsters), the correct spelling if applicable and the words "Copy out 100 times by tomorrow".

On a lighter note, I came across the following several years ago and it always puts a smile on my face:

The European Union commissioners have announced that agreement has been reached to adopt English as the preferred language for European communications, rather than German, which was the other possibility. As part of the negotiations, Her Majesty's Government conceded that English spelling had some room for improvement and has accepted a five-year phased plan for what will be known as EuroEnglish (Euro for short).

In the first year, "s" will be used instead of the soft "c". Sertainly, sivil servants will resieve this news with joy. Also, the hard "c" will be replaced with "k". Not only will this klear up konfusion, but typewriters kan have one less letter.

There will be growing publik emthusiasm in the sekond year, when the troublesome "ph" will be replaced by "f". This will make words like "fotograf" 20 per sent shorter.

In the third year, publik akseptanse of the new spelling kan be expekted to reach the stage where more komplikated changes are possible.

Governments will enkorage the removal of double letters, which have always ben a deterent to akurate speling. Also, al wil agre that the horible mes of silent "e"s in the languag is disgrasful, and they would go.

By the fourth year, peopl wil be reseptiv to steps such as replasing "th" by z" and "w" by v

During ze fifz year, ze unesesary "o" kan be dropd from vords kontaining "ou", and similar changes vud of kors be aplid to ozer kombinations of leters.

After zis fifz yer, ve vil hav a reli sensibl riten styl. Zer vil be no mor trubls or difikultis and evrivun vil find it ezi tu understand ech ozer.

Ze drem vil finali kum tru!

Reet
x

[Alison]

Somebody recently criticised my use of the phrase "bored beans" but I didn't get huffy ~ I just thought fair enough, that's their opinion and they're entitled to it. I didn't take it personally.

I believe that was me and how do you know I didn't mean it personally?

[Two_Sheds]

a secondary school geography teacher ... tried to persuade me that giving a pupil an A* for a piece of worked which contained grammatical AND spelling errors was perfectly acceptable, providing the essence of the work was correct

Yep, because it's a geography test, not an English test

Having said that, in Literacy (we don't call it English now) we don't correct wrong spellings unless they really are terrible

[Two_Sheds]

how do you know I didn't mean it personally?

I didn't say you didn't mean it, I said I didn't take it, personally

[Alison]

I didn't say you didn't mean it, I said I didn't take it, personally

Fair point , I find that not taking things personally is usually a good way of getting through life

[reetnproper]

Yep, because it's a geography test, not an English test

Having said that, in Literacy (we don't call it English now) we don't correct wrong spellings unless they really are terrible

But that's appalling.

So when these young people get into the work place (assuming that their CVs haven't been binned due to dreadful spelling and grammar), how on earth are they going to cope, when the boss asks them to do a report or a presentation? If their spelling hasn't been corrected throughout their school careers, what hope have they got for progress? How on earth are they going to deal with having their work criticised and returned as unacceptable? And before someone says 'Spell Checker' - that's supposed to be an aid and not an extension of the mind

'Ah well at least the essence is correct' really doesn't cut it in the work place, sadly

I'm stunned and the powers that be reckon that the current education standards haven't been dumbed down? Sure looks like it from where I'm sitting .

Reet
x

[bearded bloke]

When I was very new on here I found "bored" beans,after a few nano seconds the penny dropped,it took a good deal longer to work out PSB,but it was not really that bad as after reading several posts backwards it became obvious,PFA took longer still but I got there.
Its all good,stuff like that makes me think a bit more & inadvertently makes it more memorable.

[janeyo]

Don't know about 2shed's school but we now have to use pink and green for marking! Growing green and tickled pick..... I am forever getting them the wrong way round when marking after a glass of homebrew - oops

[Aberdeenplotter]

Nah, I hated grammar at school, too many rules to remember. It is difficult.

Spelling comes easily to me, but mental maths ~ no chance.

And I thought I could count on you too.

[bearded bloke]

I think the English language is a constantly evolving thing. Read any olde bookes and ye wille finde loades of annoyinge thinges that have now changed. I do worry that text-speak will take over, though.

Wise words there G4,I also fear txt spk will become more prevalent as time & technology progress,the English English language is not helped when the spelling helpers are largely American English.

There is a theory that so long as the correct letters are used in a word,provided that the first & last letters are in the correct position the rest can be in any order,give it a try ...........

Olny srmat poelpe can raed tihs. I cdnuolt blveiee taht I cluod aulaclty uesdnatnrd waht I was rdanieg. The phaonmneal pweor of the hmuan mnid, aoccdrnig to a rscheearch at Cmabrigde Uinervtisy, it deosn't mttaer in waht oredr the ltteers in a wrod are, the olny iprmoatnt tihng is taht the frist and lsat ltteer be in the rghit pclae. The rset can be a taotl mses and you can sitll raed it wouthit a porbelm. Tihs is bcuseae the huamn mnid deos not raed ervey lteter by istlef, but the wrod as a wlohe. Amzanig huh? yaeh and I awlyas tghuhot slpeling was ipmorantt! if you can raed tihs psas it on!!

[taff]

i before e except after c

except for the word 'weird'

and my personal all time favourite misunderstanding....

Someone sent an e-mail in work telling everyone they'd returned an item to infantry......
INVENTORY nincompoop!!

[rustylady]

Oh lord Bernie - I could understand that! Still doesn't mean that one shouldn't at least try to get the correct spellings though.

[Florence Fennel]

Received an e-mail at work yesterday - the word should have been "being", but was written as "been". Priceless.

[OverWyreGrower]

Recently I've been helping shortlist at work for some admin posts (about a grade below my own admin post)... I insisted the panel (made up of non-admin people, managers etc) scored down those with spelling and grammatical errors.

Lets face it - if you are applying for a job at a University, you'd better spell the word 'University' right, hadn't you?

Also, people who spelt their own street name wrong, or various 'key' words such as 'administration' etc.

Sorry, but if you are putting in an application/CV, you check it. Then you check it again, then you get someone else to check it.