Make a cake. Feel happy.
When I first met Glenn, he told me his favourite kind of cake was carrot cake, so I promised to make him one.
In the intervening years (many), I have made him three carrot cakes (few). Including one at the weekend. It was the perfect carrot cake, so kudos once again to my friend Charlotte who provided the recipe from her extensive collection.
Digression: I was going to extoll the virtues of cooking, but instead I will convey my love of learning new rules of grammar with which to terrorise the junior staff at work.
I only learned the difference between "less" and "fewer" recently. Isn't it shocking that I could have made it all the way through my (relatively extensive) education without picking it up?
I sense I am not entirely alone in my glorious ignorance, though. There appears to be a whole generation of us (well, us state school kids, anyway) who missed out on learning parts of speech (gerund, anyone?), rules of grammar, rudimentary spellings etc.
But the problem is that I'm happy as larry being a know-nothing until I learn a new rule. Once I've mastered it, though, I get tooth-grindingly annoyed with people making the very same mistake that I had previously been making. And I have a sneaking suspicion that correcting people's grammar when I'm reviewing their reports just makes me look irritating and smug (let's face it, that's how we all imagine Lynn Truss, isn't it?)
But she's got a point about "its" and "it's". I wrote that particular rule on a post-it note and stuck it on my junior's laptop after he got it wrong on every single page of a report. Does that constitute bullying on my part?
In the intervening years (many), I have made him three carrot cakes (few). Including one at the weekend. It was the perfect carrot cake, so kudos once again to my friend Charlotte who provided the recipe from her extensive collection.
Digression: I was going to extoll the virtues of cooking, but instead I will convey my love of learning new rules of grammar with which to terrorise the junior staff at work.
I only learned the difference between "less" and "fewer" recently. Isn't it shocking that I could have made it all the way through my (relatively extensive) education without picking it up?
I sense I am not entirely alone in my glorious ignorance, though. There appears to be a whole generation of us (well, us state school kids, anyway) who missed out on learning parts of speech (gerund, anyone?), rules of grammar, rudimentary spellings etc.
But the problem is that I'm happy as larry being a know-nothing until I learn a new rule. Once I've mastered it, though, I get tooth-grindingly annoyed with people making the very same mistake that I had previously been making. And I have a sneaking suspicion that correcting people's grammar when I'm reviewing their reports just makes me look irritating and smug (let's face it, that's how we all imagine Lynn Truss, isn't it?)
But she's got a point about "its" and "it's". I wrote that particular rule on a post-it note and stuck it on my junior's laptop after he got it wrong on every single page of a report. Does that constitute bullying on my part?
posted by OboeJane at 8:55 pm
4 Comments:
No - I'm a total grammar and spelling freak - although I know you'd never guess it reading my blog!!! I'm with you all the way on correcting people when they get it wrong - it makes my sooo cross some of the letters that get sent from our office to clients!!! I am not entirely clear, however, on the difference between less and fewer - which makes me feel really bad because I know that I should know. Could you enlighten me on this please? By the way I think the problem stems from children not reading enough!!!!
My explanation is probably a bit clumsy:
- "less" if the thing you are talking about cannot break down into individual units
- "fewer" if it CAN break down into individual units
e.g. Less time; fewer hours
Less money; fewer coins
Less soup; fewer sausages
Less humanity; fewer people
Yay! I was wondering about that, too. Of course, we did go to the same school so I missed out on this quality grammar stuff, too. Used to love teaching it though, although I had to be sent on a course beforehand as I was so deficient (yes, really!). It's RULES and we all like RULES :o) Anyhoo, my challenge for today is to now use 'less' and 'fewer' as many times as possible. Wonder if anyone will notice...? E x
"I only learned the difference between "less" and "fewer" recently."
Oh my giddy aunt, I can't believe you can have previously bypassed my less/fewer detector. I'm obsessed (it's a long running bot thing).
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