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Jules.

Typos

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Does any one else have the same problem with typos that I have?? For some reason as I type now in the text box I find it really hard to spot my typos whan I read it back, but if I preview my post I find it much easier to spot them when the type is per the forum.

99 times out of a 100 I preview what I have written, & you can guarantee a huge typo when I don't preview, & I don't like doing loads of edits to my posts later!

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I have seen a typo I made in a post in the gardening bit today :lol: I am in a can't be bothered mood 8) so it is staying :lol:

 

I didn't preview the post which I sometimes do. I don't usually spot typos in the text box but if I preview them they stand out a mile :?

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That wouldn't work. "Sic" means you meant to type what you typed, and you don't want people to think it was a typing error. It is just Latin for "thus", but Latin is so beautifully concise; the English alternative would be: "You might think that what I just typed looks wrong, but that is either (1) how it was in the original text I am quoting from or (2) how I spell a name, even if you think it should be spelt differently."

 

I always correct my errors, but I like to do it quickly before anyone has seen them so that the correction line doesn't appear.

 

I don't like seeing spelling and grammar mistakes on message boards, because if you constantly see these errors in print you can start to think that they are correct. But some of them are amusing: "bare" for "bear", for example; and when someone says that they have been laying around all day (instead of lying), I picture them wandering around the garden laying eggs under every bush.

 

The misuse of words is annoying too. "Decimate" means to reduce by one-tenth: it's what the Roman army did to their own legions as a punishment. But even the Oxford English Dictionary has had to give in and say that it is also now used loosely to mean "to destroy a large proportion of", when this is exactly what it does not mean!

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You could be starting a whole new thread here Gallina.

 

Misuse of the the word "infer" gets me down. It means to draw a conclusion on the basis of evidence, it does not mean to imply, but when most people ask "what are you inferring" they mean "what are you implying or suggesting".

 

Any others anyone?? :lol:

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I know what it means.

you meant to type what you typed, and you don't want people to think it was a typing error
Hence I would use it to say I meant to type it like that! Of course it was a joke otherwise I would have just got it right the first time.

 

Ok my English isn't perfect but I'm 26 and when I was at school they didn't teach us anything useful. I never even got taught my tables, just the assumption when I got to secondary school that I knew them. My spelling is a huge amount better than many my age and I can be grateful to my parents for that.

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Your spelling is very good, Bronze!

 

Good spelling was compulsory in our day: we had tests every day at primary school, and we used to have spelling bees as an end-of-term "treat": the person who won received a dictionary as a prize (which was a bit daft, as it was the one who came last who needed it most).

 

Then at secondary school we had English language lessons with Ridout's book. We were given hundreds of sentences, and had to spot the grammatical error in each one. Some were easy (e.g. "who" used instead of "whom"), but others were quite tough.

 

I think somewhere in between our regimented teaching and the free expression of recent years is about right: I hope schools are going that way now. When we wrote an essay (which was then called a composition), we lost one mark out of ten for every spelling mistake, which meant that if you spelt ten words wrongly you automatically got 0 out of 10, even if you were a superb writer.

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Bring back that way of teaching.

 

Typos are I guess slightly different as it involves the ability to type. For me some days are better than others. At the moment I have a wriggly baby on my lap so the only reason this is understandable is that I'm really concentrating purely because of the subject making me feel I should.

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You could be starting a whole new thread here Gallina.

 

Misuse of the the word "infer" gets me down. It means to draw a conclusion on the basis of evidence, it does not mean to imply, but when most people ask "what are you inferring" they mean "what are you implying or suggesting".

 

Any others anyone?? :lol:

 

Carl's bugbear is the use of the word 'enormity' - this is another word which will probably be accepted to mean what people are using it to mean. It's usage is in dispute according to the Oxford dictionary - the correct word is enormousness........... I think :? (because I'm guilty of using enormity :? )

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