Grammar - Part 2 (the false plural)

FIFA World Cup Trophy

Is it just me that gets annoyed when people, and in particular the press, uses a plural verb with a singular noun, or less frequently vice versa?

Of course we are in the middle of the World Cup, so the very worst offences come out all the time. You know the sort of thing. First of all, as a non-football-fan I object to using "England" out of context to mean a team rather than a country... come to that I object to using the term "World Cup" without qualifying it will "football". In fact, it isn't even a cup, it's a trophy, for heaven's sake! However that's beside the point.

A typical statement from the press might be "England are favourites to win the game". Now, in no sense is "England" plural. England is a country (as already stated) but even the "England team" is singular, so it has to be "England is favourite to win the game". What else can it be? On the other hand "England team members play to the end" makes perfect sense: "team members" is plural.

I'll gather some interesting examples here as I find them.. This letter to the Boston Standard manages to get plural for singular and vice versa in one sentence. Perhaps it should go up for some trophy (or should that be cup?). Granted it was written by a reader and not by a staff journalist but it was surely the editor that put this sentence in bold print without correcting it.

"Interesting isn’t it that our county council say that Boston, the county’s second largest town, does not need a bypass, while towns like Crowland in the south of the county has two!"

Grammar - Part 1 (the apostrophe)

As usual when I set up a personal blog, I haven't really been making much use of this one, so I thought I might at least temporarily start posting about grammatical errors I see. I know, everyone does it, but I hope to make it at least slightly interesting.

There is a problem with writing such a blog and that is, what if I don't get my grammar right all the time. Well, I am not perfect in that respect, certainly. My punctuation can be a bit erratic as you may have noticed and I am prone to typographical errors when I'm typing quickly as I am just now.

Motor racing at it's best (sic)

I'll certainly do my best to keep on the straight and narrow but I do think there's a difference between a note to oneself (where grammar doesn't matter), a blog (where people will see it so you should make an attempt to get it right) and, for example, advertising copy (which should have been proof-read to death).

The first and most obvious target is the apostrophe. It seems that superfluous apostrophes, sometimes called greengrocers' apostrophes because they were once almost solely used on A-boards advertising vegetables, have found their way into everywhere that the written word can be found.

This week we are due to go to the Goodwood Festival of Speed. I pointed out to my wife that she may be interested in one of the branded t-shirts but she went off the idea when we found the ones pictured here. I wonder whether Lord March knows about this blunder?

"It is" is contracted to "it's" using an apostrophe. That would make using an apostrophe for the possessive ambiguous, so it's omitted in "its" when it is possessive:

• "Motor racing at its best." but...
• "It's the best motor racing."

Readings largest tanning studio (sic)

Someone today pointed out a rare case of the missing apostrophe. I suppose with all these extra ones around the country we had to find where they'd been stolen from at some point. Here is the second exhibit showing an advert for a tanning salon in Reading.

I'll keep my eye out for interesting cases of the superfluous or missing apostrophe. This is no place for the banal, every day apple's and pear's of the greengrocer's sign.

Cats

Ban domestic cats (in the UK), I say. Keeping them indoors is cruel to cats; letting them out adds an unnatural predator for wildlife, and one that doesn't even usually know what to do once prey has been caught.

This New Zealander has the right idea.

I am fed up with hearing cat owners mourning the death of another wild animal or bird when the solution (or rather the problem) is staring them in the face. I am also fed up of hearing people saying their cat doesn't kill, when it is a predator and they have clearly not followed it everywhere it has gone.

There may be people (on farms for instance) for whom keeping cats is a good solution to a pest problem but mostly the cat is the problem.

Teasers and spoilers

I am no great sports fan. Certainly I like to watch Formula One when I get a chance, and maybe occasionally tennis, athletics and other bits and pieces but I'm not into football and indeed most team games. This means I find it slightly amusing when you get announcements on television like:

"Look away now if you don't want to see the result of the Chelsea versus Arsenal game that will be on Match of the Day after the news"

Yes, I find it amusing and I don't entirely understand it, but I do respect the interest of others in not knowing the score. So what's the problem? It's that broadcasters don't seem to realise that the same enjoyment of suspense can exist for types of programme other than sport.

An obvious recent example (though I would suggest a minor one in many ways) was the way that Peter Capaldi was unveiled as the new Doctor Who with great pomp in August, when his first episode will not air until Christmas. While it could easily be argued that this didn't deserve a programme of its own (which incidentally I didn't watch), and in the (distant) past the first one would know of a new actor in the role would be when the character "regenerated", I don't think the name of the actor is really that important to the series, but rather how he takes on the part and we won't really know that until he is well under-way. The real suspense in this case is in the new episodes, not the actor himself.

No, there are much more serious crimes of spoiling going on every day, whether it's for drama series or for documentaries.

Middle-lane hogging

Taffic on the M1 (linked from the BBC News Magazine)

Today I came across a BBC article Motorway middle-lane hoggers to face on-the-spot fines. It turns out that the proposed fines are not just about middle-lane hogging but about a number of frequently practiced, and arguably "minor" careless driving offences. Predictably though the reader comments mostly focused on the subject in the title. I was even moved to add my own contribution to the comments; something I rarely do.

I have just found another BBC article: Who, what, why: What's wrong with middle-lane hogging? which, in talking to a number of experts and pundits, aims to discover why middle-lane hogging is a bad thing. I think the article is generally reasonable but I don't think it managed to uncover all of the issues.

Getting the ball rolling

I didn't want to start this blog off with a bland "well here I am, starting a blog", and neither did I want to start off with something really controversial, so here are some photos I took recently in Bristol. Yes, I'm an amateur photographer with occasional ambition to sell work.

Four Bristol street scenes

Two from the Bristol 10K, 2013