Teachers: Are Gove and Cameron listening?

[teamsaint]

Now then; I didn't penalise your for your "9". :winkeye:

That one, at least, was deliberate !!
(only because momentarily I couldn't remember if the rule was over ten or over 100, so used 9 or nine !)

[Resurrection Man]

they ARE important. indeed . like capital letters. And fully formed sentences. (damn post modernism).
what isn't important is to have conquered them by a certain age, to someonebody elses arbitrary criteria.

If you can find more than 9 grammatical errors in this post you win today's prize, which is to be directed to a classic B52's video of my choosing on youtube !
and RM, I am really pleased that you agree.

How am I doing? :winkeye:

[teamsaint]

How am I doing? :winkeye:

If you were quicker ,You would of won , but their you go !

And seriously, Post Modernism has a HUGE amount to answer for. Getting right up my nose these days.

[Eine Alpensinfonie]

[QUOTE}they ARE important. indeedGAP. like capital letters. And fully formed sentences. (damn post modernism).
what isn't important is to have conquered them by a certain age, to someonebody else's arbitrary criteria.

If you can find more than 9 grammatical errors in this post, you win today's prize, which is to be directed to a classic B52's video of my choosing on youtube !
and RM, I am really pleased that you agree.
[/QUOTE] - plus the incomplete sentences

[Resurrection Man]

Well, three pages on, and Ams, you are deathly quiet in response to my post #89. From that I can only assume that you are in agreement which is good.

Vodkadilc...you also liked this article and so I'm guessing that you are able to 'square the circle' regarding the questions that I raised in just that one paragraph ?

[jean]

indeedGAP.

There was a convention - some writers still observe it -of a double space before punctuation marks.

So that one's not a mistake.

And not a matter of grammar, anyway.

[jean]

...You would of won...

There's another.

[amateur51]

Well, three pages on, and Ams, you are deathly quiet in response to my post #89. From that I can only assume that you are in agreement which is good.

I thought you'd answered most of them yourself, RM :smiley:

[teamsaint]

There's another.

If people could be taught the correct use of " would have" and how to use "their", or "there" as appropriate(or spelling was standardised to one version, about 50% of all grammar and spelling mistakes in the entire language would be eradicated.

[Eine Alpensinfonie]

If people could be taught the correct use of " would have" and how to use "their", or "there" as appropriate(or spelling was standardised to one version, about 50% of all grammar and spelling mistakes in the entire language would be eradicated.

Lots of new ones would emerge by further carelessness.

[Eine Alpensinfonie]

There was a convention - some writers still observe it -of a double space before punctuation marks.

So that one's not a mistake.

And not a matter of grammar, anyway.

I think it was an accidental typo nevertheless . Incidentally , I've seen this gap used for exclamation and question marks , but never for commas and full stops .

[teamsaint]

You may be correct EA.
I was quite pleased by my inadvertent creation of the word "someonebody". Anybody else like it? Can anyonebody find a use for it?

[Historian]

If people could be taught the correct use of " would have" and how to use "their", or "there" as appropriate(or spelling was standardised to one version, about 50% of all grammar and spelling mistakes in the entire language would be eradicated.

I fear that 'would of' will effectively become a standard form some years hence. Whatever else is taught in English (which does cover a much wider range nowadays) such basic grammar does seem to be neglected, not to mention spelling.

[Eine Alpensinfonie]

There are some who take an "anything goes" approach, therebyallowing more amd more linguistic errors to creep into the language, increasing its complexity and making it increasingly difficult for overseas students to comprehend.

[gurnemanz]

I fear that 'would of' will effectively become a standard form some years hence. Whatever else is taught in English (which does cover a much wider range nowadays) such basic grammar does seem to be neglected, not to mention spelling.

As a spoken form it is already standard in it that "would've" and "would of" have the same pronunciation. This is the reason for the confusion in the first place. It only becomes an error when written down as "would of".

I do not think this will ever become a standard written form. For a start, it is obviously totally ungrammatical, an abuse of the fundamental syntactic rule that the present perfect tense consists of the auxiliary verb "have" followed by the past participle of the verb as in : "I have eaten it" or the abbreviated form "I've eaten it". As far as I know, not many people feel the need to write: "I of eaten it".

Furthermore, the same error would have to become standard in the case of all modal verbs followed by "have" in its abbreviated form and a past participle, as in, for example, should've (should of?), might've, must've, will've, could've and all the corresponding negative forms, such as wouldn't've, shouldn't've, won't've etc, all of which are quite normal abbreviations in colloquial spoken English.