From the sublime to the ridiculous

GRAMMAR CONSULTANT

January 30th, 2007 Posted in Amusing Events

It’s a long standing joke that I am rather anal about spelling and grammar. And rightly so, in my eyes, the English language is there for a reason, we should learn it and we should respect it. This one reason why I refuse to conform to text speak (txt spk), partly because I don’t like to see kids growing up thinking that the correct spelling of the word ‘mate’ is ‘m8′ and mostly because I don’t understand it.

Their, there, they’re; where, were, we’re; it’s, its, its’. I know the differences between them and have the unpopular habit of correcting people when they are wrong. Yes, I’m one of those people. I also have a big thing about ‘me and my friend’ becoming ‘my friend and I’ - a cause of intense irritation to my entire social circle and beyond.

BUT, I have my uses, as was proven this afternoon when Shunta phoned me up:

“mate, “Rainbow’s end”, does that have an apostrophe before the ’s’?”
“Rainbow’s end? Yes, it does mate. The end of the rainbow.”

and then in the background I heard Lucy shrieking “I told you so, I told you so”, so I was put on to two year old James whilst a brief exchange of husband and wife banter ensued.

But this wasn’t the only instance today.

“It was a bit of a coups” a colleague said, walking out of his office.
“A bit of a pooh?” another colleague misheard, wondering what on earth the topic of conversation was.
“No, a bit of a coups” he reiterated, and then decided to spell it for us…
“C–O–O–P”

I kept quiet.

  1. 2 Responses to “GRAMMAR CONSULTANT”

  2. By Wibbler on Feb 2, 2007

    So, there I was, chuckling at the Shunta debacle, when I happened on the “coups” story. I am bristling with excitement. You say “coups”, which is the plural of “coup”. Assuming you meant the following definition (as there is no other):
    http://www.thefreedictionary.com/Coups

    then your written interpretation of the word is grammatically incorrect. It should be “It was a bit of a coup.”

    I AM SO HAPPY ABOUT THIS.

  3. By Jonola on Feb 4, 2007

    you are right, I inadvertently used the plural - this, in itself, is a bit of a COUP.

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