Grammar and spelling, innit.

Although I definitely didn't think so at the time, I am now very pleased to have studied Latin at school. I absolutely hated it. My attention span, even then, was woefully inadequate and I remember with crystal clarity the reverie I would enter as conjugations and declensions washed over me, if not all of the words themselves. An unruly child, the fact that my Latin teacher had the charisma of a tin of tuna didn't help me embrace the language with any of the passion I devoted to subjects in which I was more interested.

The thing about Latin though, is that it really does help you understand where our language comes from. It is also a very precise language - hence very good at steering away from ambiguity. I imagine this is why scientific phyla are given Latin designations. You know where you are with it. It does, as they say, exactly what it says on the tin. Which may seem obvious, except that so much of today's languages do not. They are, for the most part, derivations of a mish mash of other languages, strewn across the globe as one regime toppled another and mother tongues changed hands at the behest of tyrannical despots. There's bits of Viking, French, and doubtless other titbits rolled up in the words we use every day. We have irregular verbs, words that have two meanings, different spellings of the same word - none of this in Latin. Which is why it is a language that is still highly regarded.

I know that a lot of people are of the opinion that it doesn't really matter if you get the spelling right, because as long as the other person understands what you are trying to communicate, then its job is done. I'm afraid I have to say I don't agree. I think that language gives us identity, and I also think that if you want people to take what you have to say seriously, the very least you can do is present it correctly. I'm not too fussed on the '8 items or less' argument (In case you aren't aware, the correct phrase would be '8 items or fewer'). To me, that's possibly going a bit far. It does niggle me; but then I accept that I am more finickity than most.

I thought that to save me ranting every time I see it, I'd just get the right bits down here so anyone who likes can use it as a quick reference guide. Or tell me to sod off, whichever you deem appropriate. I don't want to get too stuffy about it, and start going into the overuse or misuse of some words (for example the trend to, like, put the word 'like' everywhere...) as I think this is more a reflection of current argot rather than a lazy or ignorant misuse of language. What would really make my day would be if you can spot a mistake in this blog. The last thing I want to do is come over all highbrow, but I can't even look at Facebook now without seething. Our kids use it every day, is it any wonder that we sometimes struggle to comprehend things they have written?

I hasten to add at this point that there is every chance there will be errors in this very piece - I don't want to get overly pedantic about it, and have quite deliberately adopted a conversational tone, not thinking too much about being obsessed with grammatical correctness. I also accept that it's very easy to get frightfully caught up in the finer nuances of inflection and suggestion inherent in different words and phrases. I just want to make a few basic observations.

So, here we go, in no particular order:-

THEIR - means belonging to them. It is possessive.

THERE - indicates something's position. As in, 'the car is over there'

THEY'RE - is a contraction of 'they are'

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ARKS - a collection of large boats, such as the one used by Noah and a number of animals, to survive during a flood

ASK - to put a question to someone

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YOUR - is possessive. 'I have borrowed your book'

YOU'RE - is a contraction of 'you are'

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ITS - is a possessive pronoun, i.e. belonging to 'it' whatever 'it' may be. As in, 'the elephant is known for its fondness of sticky buns'

IT'S -  a contraction of 'it is' or 'it has'. As in, 'it's been great to see you'

ITS' - DOES NOT EXIST!!

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BROUGHT - the past tense of 'bring'

BOUGHT - the past tense of 'buy'

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EFFECT - more commonly a noun - Something brought about by an external influence. Can be used as a verb if the agent caused something to happen. For example, 'the manager effected positive improvements in the office'

AFFECT - almost always a verb - To have an influence on. For example 'High interest rates can affect house prices'

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TO - in a direction so as to reach

TOO - another word for 'also'

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PACIFIC - a large body of salt water occupying nearly half the surface of the earth

SPECIFIC - having a particular bearing or reference

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LOOSE - not tied down

LOSE - unable to find any more

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Correct - 'I would have remembered my coat had I known it would rain'

Incorrect - 'I would of remembered my coat had I known it would rain'

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It's 'definitely', not 'definately'. Imagine it being from 'infinite'

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The following are two separate words; not one

A lot

Thank you

THE APOSTROPHE

While we're here, let's have a little chat about the apostrophe. The purpose of the apostrophe is to denote ownership, or contraction.

By contraction, I mean as in doesn't (does not)

By ownership, I mean as in 'the dog's bone'

If you don't put in an apostrophe, it means the word has been made into a plural. For example 'We have over two hundred cars in stock'

Equally, if you put in an apostrophe when you mean to pluralise, you look like an absolute idiot:

'Get your Christmas Tree's here!' NOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!

REALISE/ REALIZE, etc.

This is an interesting one. Most people (myself included) assumed that 'realize' was an Americanisation, and that realise was the correct spelling. In fact, I was incorrect. Either is fine in this country. In these matters of debate, I refer to Oxford Dictionaries and they give their conclusions here

TEXT ABBREVIATIONS


Due to the shortened nature of texts/ tweets, abbreviations are often used. There are no hard and fast rules here, but I wonder if any of you share my opinions:

ur - You are
yr - Your

m8 - Not acceptable in any situation whatsoever if you are over 14. And even then, frowned upon.

luv - Hell no.

CAPITALISATION

Capital letters are for the beginnings of sentences and for proper nouns. Or acronyms. Nowhere else.

Yours Sincerely - NO


Yours sincerely - YES


When I started to type this, I thought it would be a paragraph or two. As you can see, it has expanded rather beyond that. I'd be delighted to know if you can think of anything I have missed, or if you think I am mistaken anywhere - by all means comment below. And feel free to pass it amongst your peers. Hope you like it, it makes a change from me banging on about Bromptons...

Pottering...

I started this blog post a couple of weeks ago, but have only just finished it, so it's slightly out of date, but hey ho. About 3 weeks out of date. But the content still relevant.

I cycle every day. Normally to work and back, about 9 miles in all, and nipping out on appointments during the day. Most weekends, I think I'll spend the days gadding about the capital, swooshing down back alleys and cobbled pathways with a sense of direction hovering somewhere in between a black cab driver and Sherpa Tensing. The reality is usually far from this. Usually it goes Friday, beer at the office, beers at a pub afterwards, home, sleep, wake up, sofa. Not very inspiring and certainly not the 'lad about town' persona I envisaged as a teenager. If I need to buy stuff, my beloved Brompton gets a cursory glance as I leave the flat, get on the bus, and engage in the melée of London shopping with all the other lemmings.

But this week has been different. A particularly nasty bout of food poisoning last weekend led me to the conclusion that I have been burning the candle at both ends. A couple of weeks of veg, salad and abstinence was self-prescribed. Saturday morning rolled around and lo and behold, I had made good on my pledge. It was therefore an altogether brighter eyed and bushier tailed creature that arose, needing to acquire some new shirts and a present for the little nephew (3 tomorrow...)

I have two bikes. One is a Marin Belvedere which is a mid-range commuter bike, and one is a Brompton M6L. The reality is, I never use the Marin. In my head I like the idea of touring about the place on it, but I think my bicycle use is only ever going to be confined to travelling to places I need to get to - in London there is no finer way to do this than on a Brompton. For a more detailed explanation of why the Brompton is a superior and sublime way of personal transportation; Will Self does it brilliantly here.

Well, there is - it's a Canondale Bad Boy 8 with a Rohloff 14 speed hub on the back end, but spending £2,300 on a bike is excessive even by my standards. And you can't quickly jump on a tube with it if it rains or you get a puncture. Or fall victim to spontaneous intoxication.

I bought my Brompton through the cyclescheme. Basically, your employer buys the bike, and you pay for it over the year, but they take the deductions from your salary before deductions - mine is £72 a month, but after tax in real terms it means I lose about £40 a month from my take home pay. It's a good way to get a better bike than you might be able to otherwise. You need to keep the tyres pumped up on a Brompton, to between 85 and 100psi as the wheels are small and you notice the traction loss if you don't, but apart from that, the sturdy steel frame and hub gears mean it is pretty much maintenance free. I could bang on about how much I love it til the cows come home, so I'll leave it there as that's not really what I'm on about today.

I left home at about 10am having looked at a map and attempted to commit it to memory. The problem is that the River Thames twists as it goes through London, rather than going in a straight line, and my sense of direction is flawed at best. In theory, you head west from where I live, come to Westminster Bridge, pop over and follow the river. In practice, you ride merrily around in circles for a while before finding a main road and going the way you know. But herein lies the rub. As anyone who knows me will tell you, my patience is in short supply. I used to become incredibly frustrated when getting lost and reach for the iPhone maps app to find where I was and hare off in the correct direction. The solution is an attitude adjustment. The way I approach it now is to figure that I know roughly what direction I'm going in, I know what I want to achieve, but if I take a wrong turn and end up a bit lost it's not the end of the world. For more details on this philosophy, you could do worse than read 'Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency' by Douglas Adams. I get to see a bit more of London and hopefully the cumulative result is that I ultimately learn more about this awesome city. I ended up going over Vauxhall Bridge, then just turned left and headed down the embankment. I have to admit, I thought Battersea Power Station was west of Battersea Bridge, so I've learnt a bit there. One of the things I love most about cycling is that you really learn how London fits together. I know lots of people (and I daresay there are millions living here) who perceive the geography of London to be accurately reflected in the tube map. Honestly, nothing could be further from the truth. I do not cycle quickly, I stop at lights (mostly), and don't really know my way around and I still guarantee I get places quicker by bike than any other method of transportation. It took me 30 minutes door to door to get from Bermondsey St to Battersea Bridge. To get to Sloane Square by equivalent public transport is quoted by TFL as being 34 minutes. Not much difference you might think, until you bear in mind that a) You have to walk to Bermondsey tube station, through one of the less salubrious areas of London, b) I got lost. If I hadn't it would have been a lot quicker, and c) The health and aesthetic benefits of cycling. Lovely morning of shopping, nice amble home. 

A lot of people bang on about the perils of cycling in London. As this is a bit of an intro to my cycling aspect of the blog, I shall set my beliefs on this topic out here:- 

Some people in the world are idiots. 

Not all cyclists are idiots, not all cab drivers are psychos, not all white van men are potential murderers, car drivers are not the modern day incarnation of the four horsemen of the apocalypse. Therefore, comments like 'Cyclists are a  bunch of idiots' or 'F***ing white van man, they AIM for cyclists' are greeted by me with scorn and derision. Let me give you an example from only this morning. If you go over London Bridge, you bear left after the top and go up King William St and come to some traffic lights outside the Bank of England. The second the lights turn green, if you pedal like mad, you will make the lights at the beginning of Cheapside to go up to St Paul's cathedral. As the lights are about to go red, the build up of traffic waiting for them to change has gone, so pedestrians think it's safe to cross. Therefore when a young lady casually strolled out into the road and across, little did she realise that there was a courier on a hybrid and me just behind him hammering it for all we were worth to make the lights. he rammed on the anchors, I went slamming into the back of him. Whose fault is this? The pedestrian didn't look. They assumed the traffic had gone and couldn't hear an engine. The guy in front of me was doing the same as me, no blame on him for pulling up short. We were cycling perfectly legally. The pedestrian crossing indicator was on 'red man', the lights were green. I do add at this point that electric cars (Prius, Gwhizz, etc) make no noise either. I'm amazed no-one's died yet from not hearing them - I think a lot of people have to admit they rely as much on their hearing as anything else when judging approaching traffic. Darwinian...?

The reality is, we were all a little bit to blame. Pedestrian should have looked. We shouldn't have been going so fast. I hasten to add that the lack of damage to bikes or people illustrate that this wasn't the worst collision to have ever hit the headlines. If you are nervous, cycle slowly. Pretty much anywhere you need to get to can be reached using back roads or parks. 

For months I said I would never cycle, you must be mad, it's a death sentence, etc etc. Now, I'd never travel any other way. I used to watch cyclists haring up the outside of queues of traffic and wonder how on earth they knew what they were doing or if they were just kamikaze. When you start, you will learn through observation how people get around, and it is up to you to decide what you feel comfortable doing. I take it pretty easy, but if I'm on the way home I'll boot it a bit and work the heart rate up as I know I can have a shower when I get home. 

It's certainly more healthy than sitting on the 43 from Friern Barnet.