'Dick & Smithy's Tips

[Yorkie]

Luckily things like typing and grammar don't bother US over-much.

- Joe

I rather like Stephen Fry's take on pedantry:

Quote:

“There are all kinds of pedants around with more time to read and imitate Lynne Truss and John Humphrys than to write poems, love-letters, novels and stories it seems. They whip out their Sharpies and take away and add apostrophes from public signs, shake their heads at prepositions which end sentences and mutter at split infinitives and misspellings, but do they bubble and froth and slobber and cream with joy at language? Do they ever let the tripping of the tips of their tongues against the tops of their teeth transport them to giddy euphoric bliss? Do they ever yoke impossible words together for the sound-sex of it? Do they use language to seduce, charm, excite, please, affirm and tickle those they talk to? Do they? I doubt it. They’re too farting busy sneering at a greengrocer’s less than perfect use of the apostrophe. Well sod them to Hades. They think they’re guardians of language. They’re no more guardians of language than the Kennel Club is the guardian of dogkind.”

End quote.

Can there be a more pedantic Society than the 'Apostrophe Protection Society' the founder of which has been sounding off again this week about Councils removing apostrophes from street names to avoid delays and errors when inputting data by the emergency services. 'Help, I'm being attacked by a knife maniac on Parsons Green"! 'Errm are you spelling that Parsons, Parson's or Parsons'?" Hello caller - hello, hello...Huh - the phones gone dead' (And the caller too no doubt ).

(Try sticking apostrophes into a Sat-Nav and see where it leads to).