ex_crew

Well-Known Member
Aug 19, 2009
163
43
A bit harsh, I understood it. English might not be Aviadors first language.
 
English Grammar & Punctuation.

scousefowler said:
Your post makes little or no sense.

Lack of grammar or commas is indefensible.

Speak english boy!

Thanks for your comments. It's not always easy getting your head into gear when you've been up since 03:30. I've added a few commas for you.

I just want to point out that the word English as a language is always writen with a capital letter!

This isn't a language forum, this is a 'friendly' airport forum. I am more interested in what people have to say than the rules of grammer and spelling. You will have to get over it because I'm not going to start going through all my posts correcting everything.
 
Re: Pakistan International Airlines

I read a number of message board forums regularly, including several aviation-related boards, and find that the standard of spelling, etymology and context on forums4airports is high in comparison with some of the other message boards.

On the Dried Plum, for example, people who describe themselves as professional pilots can sometimes barely string two words together, let alone spell correctly. I've seen these posters actually write such things as, 'I would of done it'.

But then my wife once held a position as secretary to a group of Crown Court judges and she told me the spelling of some of them was appalling.

In the end, on message boards like this, does it matter if grammar and spelling are not of the first rank so long as the posts make sense?

I believe it doesn't - sorry, does not.

I never criticise others in this regard because I am acutely conscious that I am nowhere near Mr Perfect and would avoid throwing stones if I lived in a glass house.
 
Re: Pakistan International Airlines

Well I understood Aviador's post, although I believe he was actually talking about Swefly, not Shaheen. Since he had been up all night, an understandable error. The point is though, whoever has operated to Pakistan, has suffered a fall in passengers during Eid and with a number of flight cancellations. I suspect this is mirrored across most airports with Pakistan flights, so probably nothing to worry about.

I am looking forward to next summer and the Pakistan v Australia Test Match at Headingley. Hopefully that might just bring along a few additional passengers wanting to join Yorkshire relatives in seeing their country take on the Aussies.
 
Re: Pakistan International Airlines

Scousefowler.. are you some kind of a school teacher with your comments about peoples grammar???? and anyway who gives a monkeys about grammar this is a freindly forum not a pi.. taking out of people forum!!!
 
Re: Pakistan International Airlines

I do not understand his post, thats all.

Any way its i before e `cept after c.
 
Or sheik. Yes mate there is probably quite a few, i just remember having that rammed down my throat when i was a kid.

Seriously though, i could not understand that post about flights being connected in Sweden, i read it a few times and still could not get it.
 
Fair enough. I guess that that is the difference between the written English language and the spoken language. I tend to write things as I'd speak it. That isn't always necessarily how it should be written. In fact doesn't using the word 'that' above look odd when it's used twice?
 
I regard message boards as extensions of speech and it never worries me when spelling or grammar is poor so long as the sense is clear although, like Aviador, I'm not keen on text speech on message boards.

When it comes to professionally written pieces, whether books, internet or newspapers, I do become annoyed when sloppy spelling, construction and grammar is used.

English is a language that constantly evolves (for instance, we never talk of manufactories these days, just factories), and has shamelessly taken words and expressions from other languages down the years.

Aviation is a particular case in point because of its French roots. Words such as fuselage, aileron and empennage all derive from French, as does the word aviation itself.

My personal bete noire (French again!) is the incessant Americanisation of British English, both in spelling and in words/expressions.

We used to have railway stations - we now seem to have train stations. In Britain things were free; now they are for free. The good old British take-away is now often superseded by the transatlantic 'to go'.

These are just a handful of Americanisms - there are numerous others that get my goat.

English spelling can be confusing though with such things as fitted and benefited.

Imagine trying to learn English with bough, cough, through and rough.

Punctuation is important though because completely different meanings can be produced using the same words.

Lynne Truss entitled her book on punctuation, Eats Shoots & Leaves.

Eats shoots and leaves is what a panda does when it is hungry.

However, if a comma is inserted after the word eats, the reference is to someone who has a snack or a meal, fires a gun then departs.

French may be many people's idea of the most beautiful language but I am convinced that English is by far the richest and the most interesting.

Before anyone asks, I'm not a school/further education teacher and never have been.
 
There's been the odd pop at spelling on the forum over the last few days I notice. I would like to take the opportunity to remind everybody that Forums4airports isn't strict with spelling unless it's totally unreadable or text speak. So nobody will get into trouble for the odd typo but it would be nice to see people paying a little bit more attention to their spelling.

Common mistakes made by people on the forum. (probably by myself as well from time to time) :whiteflag:

breaks vs brakes

Break = "to break something by knocking it onto the floor." [Past tense = broken]

Brake = "to brake hard to stop the car quickly." [Past tense = braked]

Another common mistake...

of vs off

of = "Source of water" or "The Queen of England" [Denoting that from which anything proceeds; indicating origin, source, descent]

off = "We are off to Majorca." or "The aircraft was going off course." [Moving off, leaving, going, taken from]

[textarea][hi-lighty:pz4wbjlr]break[/hi-lighty:pz4wbjlr] a piece [hi-lighty:pz4wbjlr]of[/hi-lighty:pz4wbjlr] bread [hi-lighty:pz4wbjlr]off[/hi-lighty:pz4wbjlr] the loaf.[/textarea]
 
My pet hate is lose and loose.

Lose is when you have lost something.
Loose is when your pants fall down!

Thank you!!! :LOL:
 
Spelling and grammar police

Feel free to slate me for starting this thread, I'm sure the whisky has helped to work this one out of me, but we are a fairly small community, and other than in reply to threads where errors are spotted (which could result in threads going off-topic), I don't know how else to raise the issue of common spelling and grammar errors that appear on the forum. Perhaps I shouldn't care about such misdemeanours, but I do and I can't change that about myself. I'm sure to some forum members this will seem incredibly petty, even ridiculous, so be it.....

Below are a couple of examples of regular mistakes.

The mixing up of lose and loose is a mistake which I regularly see on the forum (and in many other places, including the BBC News website this week).

Definitions below are according to dictionary.com

Loose = Not firmly or tightly fixed in place; detached or able to be detached.
Loosing is an incorrect abbreviation of loosening, which means to make something less tight or firm.

Lose = Be deprived of or cease to have or retain.
Losing = present participle of lose.

The majority of the time where this error occurs is where loose is used instead of lose, or loosing is used instead of losing.


Another common mistake is the mixing up of we're and were.

We're is an abbreviation of 'we are'. The apostrophe in we're denotes the contraction of the two words into one and the dropping of the letter a from are. We're is used to describe the present or future activity / activities of more than one individual, where commonly the writer of we're is one of these individuals.

Were is the past tense of the verb 'be' (as an aside, been is the past participle of be). If you are discussing an occurrence that is historic, it is likely that the word were rather than we're is the correct word to write.

An example citing both of the above correctly is as follows:

'PIA were going to introduce the Boeing 777 next week to LBA, but it now seems that the airport is losing out on having this aircraft visit for at least the next month'.

Thanks for reading my ramble, and remember I mean no offence by this thread, as I have stated in the topic description: 'This is a thread to mention the regular spelling and grammar mistakes that you spot on the forum. This thread is NOT intended to ridicule individual forum members, merely to inform.'
 
Was it a good single malt Galaxy?

I agree that a good drop of the hard stuff is prone to bring out the Plato in us all!

I have to say that I tend to agree with your general drift and whilst many would say it doesn't matter how things are written as long as the reader understands what is being said I do think it is a shame when this sort of error is made as, to my mind at least, it distracts the reader and somehow devalues the message that is being transmitted.

We all make mistakes and are prone to making mistakes when typing from time to time. This subject is one which does appear on the forum every now and again and when such errors are made, and pointed out, one would hope that the error would be taken on board by the original writer and not repeated. After all there is an old dictum which says something like "The day you stop learning is the day you start dying" and who in their right mind wants to start dying.

Errors and omissions in the above text excepted of course!!
 
Airforced it was a Glenmorangie 10 year, savoured in the comfort of my armchair, and very good it was too, particularly after half a dozen pints of Real Ale in Horsforth!

I absolutely agree with everything you have said there, particularly your point about errors devaluing messages.


Being and been is another common error, I often see the word been used on the forum where being should have been used instead, here's a lesson and a little test on the subject: http://www.grammar-monster.com/easily_c ... g_been.htm .
 
English is probably the richest language in the world in the number of alternative words, expressions and idioms it possesses. It may not have the beauty of French (that's subjective of course) but because it has stolen words shamelessly from so many other languages through the centuries (many of the words in aviation stem from the French language) it now has a richness rarely found elsewhere.

It also continually evolves, not always for the better in my opinion because for the past three quarters of a century the driver has invariably been American English. For some reason we seem besotted with Americanisms that are then absorbed into English proper and before long we've forgotten their origin.

To give three examples, in recent years such words/expressions as 'for free' (it was always 'free' in English proper), 'train station' (instead of 'railway station') and 'upcoming' (replacing 'forthcoming') have beccome embedded into English in the UK.

One of my particular dislikes is the increasing tendency of sports commentators to say, 'back to back wins' when there is an adult word (consecutive) that does the job perfectly. We don't seem to do things any more either, we get to do them.

Lyn Truss's book on punctuation is amusing but also has a serious side. The title, 'Eats Shoots & Leaves' is used to convey that the insertion of just one comma can alter the meaning completely.

A panda eats shoots and leaves as its staple diet but a person who enjoys a meal before killing someone and afterwards departs the scene eats, shoots and leaves.

Text speech undoubtedly has a part to play in the deteriorating standard of written English but that, in my opinion, doesn't matter too much on message board-type websites such as this one. I do become annoyed though when I read sloppy English from professional writers.

Most of us struggle sometimes with spelling. Again, on websites such as this one that's not a problem so long as the sense is not compromised. Uninterested and disinterested are frequently confused and this can be important because they have different meanings.

Perhaps the classic error is the substition of 'have' with 'of' in, for example, 'I would of gone'. I'm sure it's the result of poor diction. The contracted 'would've' (in place of would have) sounds like 'would of' from many people's lips.

I take great pleasure from reading a book written in beautifully crafted English. Such writers still exist but they are rapidly becoming the minority. I envy their gift.
 

Upload Media

Upgrade Your Account

Subscribe to help support your favourite forum and in return we'll remove all our advertisements. Your contribution will help to pay for things like site maintenance, domain name renewals and annual server charges.



Forums4aiports
Subscribe

NEW - Profile Posts

Jon Dempsey wrote on HPsauce's profile.
Hi, I was born and lived in B36 for a long time - Lindale Avenue, just around the corner from Hodge Hill Comp.
I just noticed your postcode on a post.

Do you still live in the area?
survived a redundancy scenario where I work for the 2nd time
If you’re tired of takeoffs, you’re tired of life.
49 trips undertaken last year. First done this year which was to North Wales where surprisingly the only slippery surfaces were in Conwy with the castle and it's walls closed due to the ice.
Aviador wrote on SNOWMAN's profile.
Thanks for the support @SNOWMAN

Trending Hashtags

Advertisement

Back
Top Bottom
  AdBlock Detected
Sure, ad-blocking software does a great job at blocking ads, but it also blocks some useful and important features of our website. For the best possible site experience please take a moment to disable your AdBlocker.