Chris,
<rant>
I know exactly what you mean. I never had any formal lessons on the
English language when I was at school. I can't look at a piece of text
and state what is wrong with it in terms of "pre-positions" and the
other technical terms used to describe our language. Hell, I even
struggle to work out which words are Verbs, which are Nouns, etc.
However, I do pride myself on having a fairly good ability to look at a
piece of text and tell where the mistakes are and how to correct them,
even if I cannot describe what is wrong in the correct technical terms.
I don't know exactly how I have this ability (which I've had from a
young age) without any teaching on the subject, but I put it down to
reading a lot of books, especially when I was younger. I guess I
"absorbed" what is correct without really knowing it.
Now just the other day I was reading one of my CDO's books. Being a bit
of a Sci-Fi nut, it was a little bit on the geeky side. I shan't
mention the title, for fear of urine extraction !! However, I was
absolutely appalled by the abysmal spelling, grammer, and punctuation
which appeared on almost every page. If this is the state of things, I
don't hold out much hope for future generations.
My absolute pet-hate of the moment (has been for sometime), and which
appeared in the aforementioned book several times, is the misuse of the
term "would have". I can see where it started. "I would have made a
cup of tea, but I had no milk" (for example) got abbreviated to "I
would've made a cup of tea ....". That's fine in itself, especially in
the spoken word, but far too many people (supposedly well-educated
people too) are now writing it as "I would of made a cup of tea ...".
Same thing with "could have" becoming "could of". These ones REALLY
makes me mad ! I find myself screaming at the page about the author's
lack of intelligence !!
You'd think a publisher might proof-read a book before putting it in
print ? If I can spot so many mistakes, I'm sure there are plenty more
which I have missed. I almost feel like emailing a list of their
mistakes to them, but frankly I have better things to do with my time.
Like reading a better book !!
</rant>
Jon
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