The Natural Philosopher wrote:


a+b*c is not the same as (a+b)*c.


But sometimes it is. :-)

--
Rod

Hypothyroidism is a seriously debilitating condition with an insidious
onset.
Although common it frequently goes undiagnosed.
www.thyromind.info www.thyroiduk.org www.altsupportthyroid.org

On 10 Dec, 13:13, robgraham wrote:
[...]
I'm not a pedant and I'm certainly not suggesting that this thread
comes out of pedancy,

Pedantry.

On Dec 10, 7:41*pm, Alang wrote:
On Wed, 10 Dec 2008 19:24:32 GMT, "The Medway Handyman"



wrote:
Alang wrote:
On Wed, 10 Dec 2008 08:54:33 +0000, Rod
wrote:

TheOldFellow wrote:
I note an exasperating trend on this list, and on t'internet in
general, to personal reinvention of English spelling and grammar.
For
instance: the Whitworth spellings for the various flavours of 'your
and you're' (as opposed to the UNF or Metric, of course) are as
follows:

'You're' means 'you are', 'your' never ever means that.
'Your' is a possessive pronoun, and can only be used when you mean
that something belongs to 'you'.

Do try and get it right folks, as the grating sounds of the
crossed-threads in my brain are getting irritating.

R.

Didn't you miss yaw and yore?

And who can ignore the "upto" neologism? And its close brethren -
inappropriate use of into, onto and so on.

tow the line.
principle and principal
there and their
I confess to misusing licence and license. Can never recall which is
which so I adopt the american usage and use either interchangeably

But.
cod philosophy
cod latin

why cod?

Always puzzled me.
I have asked a number of graduates in english over the years and none
can tell me. One had *Phd and was a rabid pedant over the use of
english and even he couldn't tell me.

http://www.worldwidewords.org/weirdwords/ww-cod2.htm

HTH

A more likely explanation but needs some confirmation

Also ties in with the kid/cod link since I've always known it as
kidology.

MBQ

On Thu, 11 Dec 2008 05:20:04 -0800 (PST), "Man at B&Q"
wrote:

On Dec 10, 7:41*pm, Alang wrote:
On Wed, 10 Dec 2008 19:24:32 GMT, "The Medway Handyman"



wrote:
Alang wrote:
On Wed, 10 Dec 2008 08:54:33 +0000, Rod
wrote:

TheOldFellow wrote:
I note an exasperating trend on this list, and on t'internet in
general, to personal reinvention of English spelling and grammar.
For
instance: the Whitworth spellings for the various flavours of 'your
and you're' (as opposed to the UNF or Metric, of course) are as
follows:

'You're' means 'you are', 'your' never ever means that.
'Your' is a possessive pronoun, and can only be used when you mean
that something belongs to 'you'.

Do try and get it right folks, as the grating sounds of the
crossed-threads in my brain are getting irritating.

R.

Didn't you miss yaw and yore?

And who can ignore the "upto" neologism? And its close brethren -
inappropriate use of into, onto and so on.

tow the line.
principle and principal
there and their
I confess to misusing licence and license. Can never recall which is
which so I adopt the american usage and use either interchangeably

But.
cod philosophy
cod latin

why cod?

Always puzzled me.
I have asked a number of graduates in english over the years and none
can tell me. One had *Phd and was a rabid pedant over the use of
english and even he couldn't tell me.

http://www.worldwidewords.org/weirdwords/ww-cod2.htm

HTH

A more likely explanation but needs some confirmation

Also ties in with the kid/cod link since I've always known it as
kidology.

I never realised the connection between kidding and cod but it could
fit.

On Thu, 11 Dec 2008 10:22:16 +0000, (Steve Firth)
wrote:

Alang wrote:

Why don't you just get to the point?

I did, but some argumentative tosspot calling himself "Alang"



plonk!

wants to
ignore the point and is attemptint to define Usenet by using his
misunderstanding of the content of a non-technical on-line dictionary.

You may refer to newsgroups however you wish, but if someone starts
callign them "lists" or "forums" or any other such name dragged in from
Compuserve, AOL or wherever they can expect to be laughed at.

"Andy Luckman (AJL Electronics)" wrote in message
. ..
In article
,
jgharston wrote:

Brian said his solicitor was regularly drunk.
Brian, said his solicitor, was regularly drunk.

What? Is this thing called love?

What is this thing called, love?

What is this thing, called love?

etc.

That is why punctuation is important, despite the lefty driven destruction
of
standards.


--

That reminds me of the very first linguistics lecture I attended. Prof
Searle came on stage & promptly started repeating "I love you" with varying
degrees of intimation, accent on words and body language. We looked at each
other wondering who this nutter was, but it was a memorable lesson in more
ways than one!

Don.

On Thu, 11 Dec 2008 06:54:44 +0000, TheOldFellow
wrote:

On Wed, 10 Dec 2008 15:26:40 +0000
(Steve Firth) wrote:

TheOldFellow wrote:

They've been called 'lists' since Darpa days,

No, that's mailing lists which are not news groups. Perhaps you could
involve in a little bit of beam-removing before attending to your
neighbour's mote?

Care to cite some evidence? I'm working from personal recollection,
which might be faulty, I admit. What about you?

I am NOT saying that News Groups and Mailing Lists are the same thing,
just that I distinctly remember News Groups being invented as a means
of user-management of Mailing Lists.

The mailing list administrative system was listserv. The Bitnet
lists were often, but not always, mirrored onto Usenet.

Hence my point (the one you snipped).

"The Internet" Hahn & Stout 1994 has two quite separate sections for
Usenet (where it uses the word groups throughout) and for Mailing
lists (called "lists"). Usenet had 150 pages of the book dedicated to
it, mailing lists 30 and the WWW has 5. It suggests a number of
public line mode browsers to use on the Web or as an alternative
Mosaic "which has a number of advanced features such as graphics".

The list of Internet Access Providers for the UK was:
Almac, Cix, Demon, Direct, Exnet, Pipex, RJB, UKnet and UKPC.

On Thu, 11 Dec 2008 11:00:45 +0000, The Natural Philosopher
wrote:


Since the only way to make everyone equal is to insist on the world
being dumbed down to the ability of a child of one to function in it
everywhere.

"Harrison Bergeron" by Kurt Vonnegut

John Stumbles wrote:
On Wed, 10 Dec 2008 14:22:50 +0000, T i m wrote:

Misspellings, typo's poor use of punctuation or any such things are

Er, "typos". No apostrophe, unless you're a grocer :-)
And a comma after "typos" please, to separate the list items correctly.


"Typo's" is perfectly valid as "Typo" is short for "Typographical Error".

In article
s.com, jgharston writes

and loads of others, I seem to spend half the news program
talking back to the TV.

PROGRAMME for the TV, PROGRAM for a computer.

On Thu, 11 Dec 2008 15:05:38 +0000, chunkyoldcortina
wrote:

John Stumbles wrote:
On Wed, 10 Dec 2008 14:22:50 +0000, T i m wrote:

Misspellings, typo's poor use of punctuation or any such things are

Er, "typos". No apostrophe, unless you're a grocer :-)
And a comma after "typos" please, to separate the list items correctly.


"Typo's" is perfectly valid as "Typo" is short for "Typographical Error".

Yeah, see! (thanks) ;-)

T i m

Alang wrote:
On Thu, 11 Dec 2008 05:20:04 -0800 (PST), "Man at B&Q"
wrote:

On Dec 10, 7:41 pm, Alang wrote:
On Wed, 10 Dec 2008 19:24:32 GMT, "The Medway Handyman"



wrote:
Alang wrote:
On Wed, 10 Dec 2008 08:54:33 +0000, Rod
wrote:

TheOldFellow wrote:
I note an exasperating trend on this list, and on t'internet in
general, to personal reinvention of English spelling and
grammar. For
instance: the Whitworth spellings for the various flavours of
'your and you're' (as opposed to the UNF or Metric, of course)
are as follows:

'You're' means 'you are', 'your' never ever means that.
'Your' is a possessive pronoun, and can only be used when you
mean that something belongs to 'you'.

Do try and get it right folks, as the grating sounds of the
crossed-threads in my brain are getting irritating.

R.

Didn't you miss yaw and yore?

And who can ignore the "upto" neologism? And its close brethren -
inappropriate use of into, onto and so on.

tow the line.
principle and principal
there and their
I confess to misusing licence and license. Can never recall which
is which so I adopt the american usage and use either
interchangeably

But.
cod philosophy
cod latin

why cod?

Always puzzled me.
I have asked a number of graduates in english over the years and
none can tell me. One had Phd and was a rabid pedant over the use
of english and even he couldn't tell me.

http://www.worldwidewords.org/weirdwords/ww-cod2.htm

HTH

A more likely explanation but needs some confirmation

Also ties in with the kid/cod link since I've always known it as
kidology.

I never realised the connection between kidding and cod but it could
fit.

That could well be it; "Cod is a little-used slang word meaning 'to hoax or
take a rise out of', known since at least 1873. It was used in much the same
way we now use the verb 'to kid'."

From; http://www.phrases.org.uk/meanings/codswallop.html

Worth signing up for the weekly digest if you like this sort of thing
http://www.phrases.org.uk/a-phrase-a...subscribe.html


--
Dave - The Medway Handyman
www.medwayhandyman.co.uk

Appelation Controlee wrote:

I reckon it's time to give a dishonourable mention to kil-O-meter [1], too
often used in place of kilometer. We seem to get by perfectly well with
kilograms instead of kil-O-grams.


With a name like that shouldn't you be correct and call it kilometre?

Andy

"John Stumbles" wrote in message
...
On Wed, 10 Dec 2008 14:22:50 +0000, T i m wrote:

Misspellings, typo's poor use of punctuation or any such things are

Er, "typos". No apostrophe, unless you're a grocer :-)
And a comma after "typos" please, to separate the list items correctly.

typo's is a contraction, I think it should have an apostrophe just like
MOT's.

We were somewhere around Barstow, on the edge of the desert, when the
drugs began to take hold. I remember Ian White
saying something like:

In the West Riding, "cod" was simply a dialect variation of "kid" as in
"kidding", eg "It's a cod".

That's common in Ireland.

We were somewhere around Barstow, on the edge of the desert, when the
drugs began to take hold. I remember Mike Tomlinson
saying something like:

In article
s.com, jgharston writes

and loads of others, I seem to spend half the news program
talking back to the TV.

PROGRAMME for the TV, PROGRAM for a computer.

Hmm. Who first used the word to describe a set of software instructions?
If it turns out the first user was Yankee, then ok, I can give them
that, but just imagine if the British computing industry had achieved
world domination - it would be a computer programme, iwt.

Grimly Curmudgeon wrote:

Hmm. Who first used the word to describe a set of software
instructions? If it turns out the first user was Yankee, then ok, I
can give them that, but just imagine if the British computing
industry had achieved world domination - it would be a computer
programme, iwt.

We very nearly did.
http://www.amazon.co.uk/s/ref=nb_ss_...ter+called+leo

What a great book.

With a bit of foresight & some back up from the banking ******s, who knows
what we could have achieved?


--
Dave - The Medway Handyman
www.medwayhandyman.co.uk

dennis@home wrote:
"John Stumbles" wrote in message
...
On Wed, 10 Dec 2008 14:22:50 +0000, T i m wrote:

Misspellings, typo's poor use of punctuation or any such things are

Er, "typos". No apostrophe, unless you're a grocer :-)
And a comma after "typos" please, to separate the list items
correctly.

typo's is a contraction, I think it should have an apostrophe just
like MOT's.

Rowlocks. It's MOTs in my book - a plural.

On Thu, 11 Dec 2008 10:22:17 +0000, (Steve Firth)
wrote:

snip

You started this nonsence

Oops.

At least it's on topic.



--
Stephen Howard
Woodwind repairs & period restorations
http://www.shwoodwind.co.uk

On Thu, 11 Dec 2008 23:48:12 +0000, Grimly Curmudgeon wrote:

We were somewhere around Barstow, on the edge of the desert, when the
drugs began to take hold. I remember Ian White
saying something like:

In the West Riding, "cod" was simply a dialect variation of "kid" as in
"kidding", eg "It's a cod".

That's common in Ireland.

Ahh, but the Irish have some delightfully quaint turns of phrase, so that's
not altogether a reliable yardstick.

--
The Wanderer

All wighy, rho sriyched yhe ket pads on my ketboawd?

On Fri, 12 Dec 2008 00:20:09 -0000, "Clot"
wrote:

dennis@home wrote:
"John Stumbles" wrote in message
...
On Wed, 10 Dec 2008 14:22:50 +0000, T i m wrote:

Misspellings, typo's poor use of punctuation or any such things are

Er, "typos". No apostrophe, unless you're a grocer :-)
And a comma after "typos" please, to separate the list items
correctly.

typo's is a contraction, I think it should have an apostrophe just
like MOT's.

Rowlocks. It's MOTs in my book - a plural.

I believe we see MOT standing for 'Ministry Of Transport (test)' so if
you provide that service then the plural things sounds ok to me
(MOTs).

"We provide Ministry of Transport tests".

But then if we contact that?

T i m

T i m wrote:
On Thu, 11 Dec 2008 15:05:38 +0000, chunkyoldcortina


"Typo's" is perfectly valid as "Typo" is short for "Typographical
Error".

Yeah, see! (thanks) ;-)

Hmm... not sure I agree though.

If the singular of typo's was typo', then yes, I'd agree, but it ain't.

From Chambers.

typo, (colloquial) noun a typographical error, a literal:
plural typos

The other Tim

dennis@home wrote:
"John Stumbles" wrote in message
...
On Wed, 10 Dec 2008 14:22:50 +0000, T i m wrote:

Misspellings, typo's poor use of punctuation or any such things are

Er, "typos". No apostrophe, unless you're a grocer :-)
And a comma after "typos" please, to separate the list items
correctly.

typo's is a contraction, I think it should have an apostrophe just
like MOT's.

But they're both wrong. ;-)

In signwriting, it's sometimes argued that an apostrophe is used after an
abbreviation when all uppercase font is being used. MOT is a recognised
contraction, MOTS isn't and could be confused with something else. MOT'S
does at least clarify things in that case. Normally however, abbreviations
are in uppercase and the "s" in lowercase so there is no confusion. As in
CDs, PCs etc..

Tim

Tim Downie wrote:
dennis@home wrote:
"John Stumbles" wrote in message
...
On Wed, 10 Dec 2008 14:22:50 +0000, T i m wrote:

Misspellings, typo's poor use of punctuation or any such things are
Er, "typos". No apostrophe, unless you're a grocer :-)
And a comma after "typos" please, to separate the list items
correctly.
typo's is a contraction, I think it should have an apostrophe just
like MOT's.

But they're both wrong. ;-)

In signwriting, it's sometimes argued that an apostrophe is used after an
abbreviation when all uppercase font is being used. MOT is a recognised
contraction, MOTS isn't and could be confused with something else. MOT'S
does at least clarify things in that case. Normally however, abbreviations
are in uppercase and the "s" in lowercase so there is no confusion. As in
CDs, PCs etc..

Tim


If they care that much about confusion, write "MOT tests" (or "MOT
Tests"). Otherwise my weight is firmly behind MOTs. And typos.

--
Rod

Hypothyroidism is a seriously debilitating condition with an insidious
onset.
Although common it frequently goes undiagnosed.
www.thyromind.info www.thyroiduk.org www.altsupportthyroid.org

Somewhat OT, but a plentiful source of spelling howlers and curious phrases
are the used car adverts on Ebay.

Somewhat outdated curious phrases used only in used car adverts:
It flew though the MOT
nice little runner
little beauty
no rust
honest car
we have here
here I have is

A few spellings from today:
miss treated
eney
eles were
ive
weve (we have)
Ring Mobil
to bye
pitchers (pictures)

Let he who is wiothout fault...

Roger R

M wrote:
Following up to TheOldFellow

'You're' means 'you are', 'your' never ever means that.
'Your' is a possessive pronoun, and can only be used when you mean that
something belongs to 'you'.

I think people generally know this but cant be bothered when typing for
usenet, theres a general conventoin not to worry to much about such
things as spelling and grammer,

did you understand all that in spite of errors, of course you did. Very
often your you're gets left to the whim of the spellcheck.

Or should that be a spelling check/checker?

(Wouldn't a spellcheck be more useful to a sorcerer's apprentice or
Harry Potter?)

--
Rod

Hypothyroidism is a seriously debilitating condition with an insidious
onset.
Although common it frequently goes undiagnosed.
www.thyromind.info www.thyroiduk.org www.altsupportthyroid.org

On Thu, 11 Dec 2008 14:30:36 +0000, Peter Parry wrote:

"The Internet" Hahn & Stout 1994 has two quite separate sections for
Usenet (where it uses the word groups throughout) and for Mailing lists
(called "lists").


So it does! I have a copy right here. I bow to your superior
reference. Funny stuff, memory.

I hate to say it, but Mrs Firth is right too.

R.
** Posted from http://www.teranews.com **

John Stumbles wrote:
On Wed, 10 Dec 2008 07:13:44 +0000, TheOldFellow wrote:

Oh dear John.

'You're' means 'you are', 'your' never ever means that.
'Your' is a possessive pronoun, and can only be used when you mean that
something belongs to 'you'.

A level stuff compared to "its" and "it's", and nobody get's (gets) those wright (right)
either. You could right (write) a book about it: how a bout (about) calling it "Eats,
shoots and leaves"?

Groan :-)

Dave

We were somewhere around Barstow, on the edge of the desert, when the
drugs began to take hold. I remember The Wanderer
saying something like:

In the West Riding, "cod" was simply a dialect variation of "kid" as in
"kidding", eg "It's a cod".

That's common in Ireland.

Ahh, but the Irish have some delightfully quaint turns of phrase, so that's
not altogether a reliable yardstick.

Ah, shure, sorr.

I should disbelieve my own ears, then?

On Thu, 11 Dec 2008 20:44:36 +0000, Andy Champ wrote:

Appelation Controlee wrote:

I reckon it's time to give a dishonourable mention to kil-O-meter [1], too
often used in place of kilometer. We seem to get by perfectly well with
kilograms instead of kil-O-grams.


With a name like that shouldn't you be correct and call it kilometre?

Fairy snuff - too much driving in Germany. ;-)

T i m wrote:
On Fri, 12 Dec 2008 00:20:09 -0000, "Clot"
wrote:

dennis@home wrote:
"John Stumbles" wrote in message
...
On Wed, 10 Dec 2008 14:22:50 +0000, T i m wrote:

Misspellings, typo's poor use of punctuation or any such things
are

Er, "typos". No apostrophe, unless you're a grocer :-)
And a comma after "typos" please, to separate the list items
correctly.

typo's is a contraction, I think it should have an apostrophe just
like MOT's.

Rowlocks. It's MOTs in my book - a plural.

I believe we see MOT standing for 'Ministry Of Transport (test)' so if
you provide that service then the plural things sounds ok to me
(MOTs).

"We provide Ministry of Transport tests".

But then if we contact that?

You could try, but I don't think it has existed in that form since either
the 60s or 70s!

Grimly Curmudgeon wrote:
PROGRAMME for the TV, PROGRAM for a computer.
Hmm. Who first used the word to describe a set of software instructions?

I seem to remember British engineers refered to a "schedule of
instructions".
I'll have to dig out my history of Lyon's Teashops.

--
JGH

TGH explained :

"TheOldFellow" wrote in message
...
I note an exasperating trend on this list, and on t'internet in general,
to personal reinvention of English spelling and grammar. For
instance: the Whitworth spellings for the various flavours of 'your and
you're' (as opposed to the UNF or Metric, of course) are as follows:

'You're' means 'you are', 'your' never ever means that.
'Your' is a possessive pronoun, and can only be used when you mean that
something belongs to 'you'.

Do try and get it right folks, as the grating sounds of the
crossed-threads in my brain are getting irritating.

Another one that is really winding me up is the use of "teh" instead of
"the", why do it?

I do that, a matter of brain working faster than fingers and finger not
pushing the keys in the right order.

--
Regards,
Harry (M1BYT) (L)
http://www.ukradioamateur.co.uk

On Tue, 16 Dec 2008 21:51:06 GMT, Harry Bloomfield
wrote:

TGH explained :

"TheOldFellow" wrote in message
...
I note an exasperating trend on this list, and on t'internet in general,
to personal reinvention of English spelling and grammar. For
instance: the Whitworth spellings for the various flavours of 'your and
you're' (as opposed to the UNF or Metric, of course) are as follows:

'You're' means 'you are', 'your' never ever means that.
'Your' is a possessive pronoun, and can only be used when you mean that
something belongs to 'you'.

Do try and get it right folks, as the grating sounds of the
crossed-threads in my brain are getting irritating.

Another one that is really winding me up is the use of "teh" instead of
"the", why do it?

I do that, a matter of brain working faster than fingers and finger not
pushing the keys in the right order.

Another annoying one is 'ect' instead of 'etc' (et cetera).
And of course there's 'asterix' instead of 'asterisk'.

--
Frank Erskine

On Wed, 17 Dec 2008 00:08:53 UTC, Frank Erskine
wrote:

Another annoying one is 'ect' instead of 'etc' (et cetera).
And of course there's 'asterix' instead of 'asterisk'.

Even more when they're spoken. eck-settera and asterix.

--
The information contained in this post is copyright the
poster, and specifically may not be published in, or used by
http://www.diybanter.com

In message , Frank Erskine
writes
On Tue, 16 Dec 2008 21:51:06 GMT, Harry Bloomfield
wrote:

TGH explained :

"TheOldFellow" wrote in message
...
I note an exasperating trend on this list, and on t'internet in general,
to personal reinvention of English spelling and grammar. For
instance: the Whitworth spellings for the various flavours of 'your and
you're' (as opposed to the UNF or Metric, of course) are as follows:

'You're' means 'you are', 'your' never ever means that.
'Your' is a possessive pronoun, and can only be used when you mean that
something belongs to 'you'.

Do try and get it right folks, as the grating sounds of the
crossed-threads in my brain are getting irritating.

Another one that is really winding me up is the use of "teh" instead of
"the", why do it?

I do that, a matter of brain working faster than fingers and finger not
pushing the keys in the right order.

Another annoying one is 'ect' instead of 'etc' (et cetera).
And of course there's 'asterix' instead of 'asterisk'.

does it Gaul you ?


--
geoff

On Wed, 17 Dec 2008 08:18:21 UTC, M wrote:

Following up to Bob Eager

Even more when they're spoken. eck-settera and asterix.

how would you say the name of the "Pentax *ist" (sic) I have one and don't
know

No idea!

I heard about four different pronunciations of the drug 'doxazosin', and
wondered which one was correct....turned out it was none of them. How do
I know? I had dinner with one of the guys who named it!
--
The information contained in this post is copyright the
poster, and specifically may not be published in, or used by
http://www.diybanter.com

Bob Eager wrote:
On Wed, 17 Dec 2008 08:18:21 UTC, M wrote:

Following up to Bob Eager

Even more when they're spoken. eck-settera and asterix.
how would you say the name of the "Pentax *ist" (sic) I have one and don't
know

No idea!

I heard about four different pronunciations of the drug 'doxazosin', and
wondered which one was correct....turned out it was none of them. How do
I know? I had dinner with one of the guys who named it!

You have to let us know!

I would guess dox-A-zo-sin (that is, with the azo bit as in azo dyes.

Why did Valium end up being universally pronounced like a valley? -
Should have Vallium for that to be the case. Any votes for vay-lium?

--
Rod

Hypothyroidism is a seriously debilitating condition with an insidious
onset.
Although common it frequently goes undiagnosed.
www.thyromind.info www.thyroiduk.org www.altsupportthyroid.org

"Bob Eager" wrote in message
...
On Wed, 17 Dec 2008 08:18:21 UTC, M wrote:

Following up to Bob Eager

Even more when they're spoken. eck-settera and asterix.

how would you say the name of the "Pentax *ist" (sic) I have one and
don't
know

No idea!

I heard about four different pronunciations of the drug 'doxazosin', and
wondered which one was correct....turned out it was none of them. How do
I know? I had dinner with one of the guys who named it!

What makes you think he was right?

On Wed, 17 Dec 2008 08:58:45 UTC, Rod wrote:

I heard about four different pronunciations of the drug 'doxazosin', and
wondered which one was correct....turned out it was none of them. How do
I know? I had dinner with one of the guys who named it!

You have to let us know!

I would guess dox-A-zo-sin (that is, with the azo bit as in azo dyes.

That's right. I was able to correct my GP (who is a friend).

--
The information contained in this post is copyright the
poster, and specifically may not be published in, or used by
http://www.diybanter.com