h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Ok, back home now. Is a little strange. Is parents 25th anniversary so can't just collapse in a heap either...
Spent eight hours at Heathrow yesterday waiting for the bus home - time spent adjusting. Think I must have spent the first couple of them looking petrified. It was sooo unnerving (and expensive!!) But now I'm unpacked, pretty carved table in the corner, a window sill full of carvings and sandstone to pack to take up to uni with me, and 19 films ready to be sent off...

Welcome back. Does this mean we get a nice big story about your travels in ?

Thanks!


It will hopefully mean that you'll get a short series of things in - if Shazz'll run them of course...

When has Shazz ever not run something that was offered, and at least mildly grammatically correct?

Unless it were totally unreadable, or in contravention of the written or unwritten ruls, I'd say getting into the Post isn't that hard. (I did it, and I'm a scientist!)

Mentioning no names... while Shazz does have a minimum standard of English competency, it's much more generous than mine would be were I ed in chief... and she bends over backwards to help people get in. So one more reason to say 'Rah Shazz' if you ask me.

Plus she employs subeditors of surpassing adeptness...

Can't really comment, as we only get to see the finished version...

Did anyone see the thing on TV where they sent 16-yr-olds back to a 50's school. I think they should teach spelling and grammar at school.

Spelling, they taught spelling at my school. Okay, so it was 20 years ago so probably doesn't mean much.

Didn't touch grammar though - at least not in that formal conjugated past participle way.

Part of me is musing that all this obsession with formal rules of language is at least partly another case of vested interests trying to maintain their systems of control... A lot of the 'teach spelling and grammar' stuff comes from newspapers and other media reliant on the existing methods of communication staying static.

Or am I being paranoid again?

they taught me grammar but I dozed in lessons.
something must have gone in subconciously though, because I know lots of it now, and object to people using it badly when they write. don't end sentences with prepositions!!!! rah

See that'd be really useful if I knew what a preposition was.

It's just be nice if people generally knew when and where to put apostrophes, the difference between your and you're, and stuff like that. Just little things.

Am okay with all that stuff and can usually spot improper use of the passive voice when I put my mind to it but dangling prepositions are something I'm not so sure of.

(Boy, and I presume to subedit other people's stuff for the Post...)

One (hah!) can usually pick up on whether a sectence feels 'wrong' even without being aware of the specific linguistic crime being committed.

Well, I can, and I expect you can. I'm not sure if everyone is capable of it.

I don't use 'one' in speech, even at Cambridge it can get you some funny looks.

I know what you mean about 'one', I think the only person who still uses it routinely is Prince Charles.

Also the intuitive feel for good/bad language - though in my case that may be due to simply reading and writing an unhealthily massive amount...

But sometimes it's right, and also makes things clearer. Darn this prejudice.

LOL

lots of reading does help.

what doesn't help is that MS-Word has crappy grammer.
It can't differentiate between correct or incorrect use of the passive voice - and it won't allow me to over-rule it, so I get pretty wavy green lines all over the place when essay writing.

I'm starting to see wavy green lines everywhere I look - work, home, it's very worrying.

i think waxy green lines are better than wavy ones.

always ignore anything word says about one's writing. except maybe spelling, cos i am big with the typos (NOT spelling mistakes, it's different)

Fine distinctions are a mark of a guilty conscience.

Grrrr.

That's a good line, I'll write it down somewhere in case I want to use it again. Where's me notebook?

Or of someone who is right, but only just.