Just how easy is it to rewrite the rules? TfL and the Olympics
 

On Nov 18, 2:42*pm, Mwmbwls wrote:
http://www.thisislondon.co.uk/standa...-drivers-rules...

Even allowing for the sensationalist "anything to sell(or rather give
away) papers" oversimplification approach of the Evening Standard,can
this/should this be done?

"Drivers will be told, under plans now being considered, not to follow
slavishly Transport for London guidelines that cause delays to
passengers" is a truly hideous sentence. Presumably theirs subs' desk
is not employing some old buffer with a bad grammar-school education
who believes that splitting an infinitive is such an egregious crime
that its prevention justifies anything, including ugliness and lack of
clarity. If you really, really are the last person alive who doesn't
realise that concerns about infinitive splitting are (a) a matter of
style rather than grammar and (b) mostly the product of silly
eighteenth century prescriptivists who believed English was just a
degenerate form of Latin in desperate need to restoration, then "not
slavishly to follow" is at least readable (although still ugly). But
what on earth led the sub to amend what was (almost certainly) the
journalist's original, and better, "not to slavishly follow" into the
dogs' dinner they published?

Pedants I don't mine. Pedants who mangle the language in pursuit of
pedantry that is of their own invention, they're a different thing.

ian

Just how easy is it to rewrite the rules? TfL and the Olympics
 

ian batten wrote:

Pedants I don't mine.


Mine or yours?

Just how easy is it to rewrite the rules? TfL and the Olympics
 

"ian batten" wrote

Pedants I don't mine.

So where do you dig them up from?
(Pedants say that you shouldn't use a preposition to end a sentence with.
;-) )

Peter

Just how easy is it to rewrite the rules? TfL and the Olympics
 

On Nov 21, 4:18*pm, "Peter Masson" wrote:
"ian batten" wrote

Pedants I don't mine.

Bloody OSX Lion (it silently corrects typing mistakes, rather than
highlighting them, so if you're in a hurry you don't notice that it's
corrected whatever you mis-typed).

So where do you dig them up from?
(Pedants say that you shouldn't use a preposition to end a sentence with.

Quite. Another bogus piece of "English as defective Latin" nonsense.

ian

Just how easy is it to rewrite the rules? TfL and the Olympics
 

On Mon, 21 Nov 2011 08:42:14 -0800 (PST), ian batten
wrote:

On Nov 21, 4:18*pm, "Peter Masson" wrote:
"ian batten" wrote

Pedants I don't mine.

Bloody OSX Lion (it silently corrects typing mistakes, rather than
highlighting them, so if you're in a hurry you don't notice that it's
corrected whatever you mis-typed).

Why don't you switch it off and use your fingers for the typos like
the rest of us di ?

So where do you dig them up from?
(Pedants say that you shouldn't use a preposition to end a sentence with.

Quite. Another bogus piece of "English as defective Latin" nonsense.

ian