And it's not a 'big ask'. It's a difficult task; an awkward question; or even a hard decision - depending on context. But no way on this green earth is 'ask' a noun.

Verbing weirds nouns; nouning verbs is even more weirdifying.

how about the punctuation of sentences with "like", it seems to be replacing umm or errmmm as a vocal pause for thought as well as a badly placed random word.

Then again, there are words which can be used in a variety of modes in a sentence, all of which make perfect sense:

"F***, the f***ing f***er's f***ing f***ed! (Innit?)"

What are we supposed to be spotting here?

I think the suggestion is the second s is superfluous in possession.

That's not right, though. As a rule of thumb, if the possessive s is pronounced it should be written.

Would you pronounce it as "Dennis", or "Denniz"? No. You would pronounce it as "Dennises", so the s goes in.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/worldservice/learningenglish/grammar/learnit/learnitv20.shtml

This is the one that irritates the tits off me. People who pause & use the above. Slightly different slant...adding an s to anway is another irritating thing that some do, or the shortening of words "footy" or "lippy" or no "probs" All this combined with either a raspy voice that young females nowadays go for & just as bad the nasal Americanised whine.

Rant over.....

It's the Americans. Trust me.

Brian, and Dennis, are both correct.

Dennis's.

"my bad" really gets my goat too

I never said it was - both Dennis' and Dennis's are acceptable versions.


On the like thing, I do agree it appears to be an American teenage TV thing but also the upward inflection seems to also be required by said user. I have banned my children from using the word like at all, they have to find different ways to express there agreement with something. Nice is also banned, I think it's rather drab, much over used to give compliment and doesn't really give a measure or feel for how much you appreciate something.

I stand corrected, still looks wrong to me though... Even when you ignore that the owners name is Sharon.

Is the other local company, Absolutely Upholstery also correct?

Currently annoying me on a daily basis:

People using "does that make sense?" at the end every sentence in place of "do you know what I mean?". I still find it insulting to have it suggested that I perhaps don't understand what they've just said, no matter how they put it.

People using "turned round" in sentences i.e. "he turned round and said...". I rarely find myself feeling the need to spin on the spot during conversations, must be some dizzy people out there. Or maybe they're all Kylie fans??

Similar to "like", the repetitive use of "you know" in sentences i.e. "so I said, you know, you can't do that it's, you know, not right, and, you know, I'd never do it..."

The use of "over" and "more than" in news reports - mainly the BBC but it seems it's not possible to be precise or at least give a close approximation, it has to be "more than 1,000" or "over 1000 people". 10,000,000 is "more than 1,000" so is that what they mean? No, clearly not, why can't they just say "1,050" or whatever the actual number is?? The icing on the cake was on BBC Radio Cambs a couple of weeks ago when the news reader said "more than 173 people" - what the fccuk?!

The use of terms such as "a little bit insane", "a little bit obsessed" or "a bit of a perfectionist" - you can't be partially insane, obsessed or a perfectionist to my mind, you either are wholly or you're something else i.e. "quirky" or "interested" or have "an eye for detail".

Rant over, I feel better for that

I find myself rather amused when people fall into the measurement conversion precision trap: The suspect was six feet (182cm) tall...

Given that the convention is for an innate precision of half the unit, the decimal conversion is thirty times as precise.

#okay, I need a life...

Come on Neil - be sensible.

"Six feet tall" means within half-an-inch of that, not half-a-foot!

Six feet one means within half an inch; six feet is within half a foot.

<looks under cushion. No, life not under here...>

People who say "of" instead of "have."

I think I might "of" farted instead of "have"'farted.

Or off instead of from. I.e. the actor "off" casualty.... instead of "from" casualty.

I think I may be guilty of doing the above

I think I may be guilty off doing the above

I think I may be guilty of having done the above

I might of done it 2. Innit.

Wel dats tipikal innit la

I seen dem ting. For real.

Me 2 bro, we is 2gever on dis

The 'of' and 'have' replacement is almost understandable: in most cases the 'have' is already abbreviated: 'I would've rather' than 'I would have' and is pronounced with a short unstressed vowel sound 'schwa' (there's probably an international phonetic symbol for the schwa - ah yes, '&#601;' - the wikipedia entry is interesting.)

In the absence of actually reading anything - or at least, anything written by a competent author - 'of', which is already unusual in that it's one of the few English words where an f is pronounced as a v, seems a logical spelling.

All hail the illiterati!

The misuse of CAN does my head too,
Can I go to toilet? YES you can, (but you may not) My teacher said that to me six decades ago

And

Don't start me on double negatives in all the songs we hear.

Nah. We dun't wanna know nuffin 'bout dat, innit!

We all need to try AND stop saying 'try and'. It's TRY TO!

What about the case where a v is pronounced as an f?

To make an omelette, firstly we have to break some eggs.

But do I really haff to break them?

Why do we do that?

Because we are lazy, it's a bit like french, they make words fit so they flow. Haff flows, if you're like me and from Yorkshire then you're looking at 'aff't.

your going aft' break (yes wrong spelling but right pronunciation) eggs. You try finding 'alifax ont map or an 'oss to ride there on.

Why when I quote do I get going, yet it shows as going?
Have we gone mad on here???

Well I'll go t'foot a stairs"

Surely that should be "I'll go t'foot a wor stairs" should it not?