Stircrazy wrote:

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Inspired by Bob's suggestion of a dedicated thread following an entertaining discussion on the Loughborough M25 thread, I'm launching this.  Feel free to chip in with contributions of your own, especially what gets your goat about other people's glaring grammatical errors when you see/hear them.

I'll kick off with a story of my own about the bane of CD's life, the auto-correct function on his smart 'phone.  I happen not to possess such a device, just a bog-standard Nokia, which has only a fairly primitive predictive text function which is quickly overridden, so I don't have to contend with the curse.  Many moons ago, however, I had a Panasonic pay-as-you-go 'phone which did correct perceived mistakes in text messages.  I once sent a message to a friend which should have concluded with the statement "Life's a bitch".  To my utter horror, I sent it without noticing that it had inexplicably changed "bitch" to "chubi"!  She's never let me forget it! 

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 Googling suggests that 'chubi' is urban slang for 'bitch'..

I hardly dare message, lest my ignorance of English grammar becomes exposed to all 

Jan wrote:

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Another auto correct example - I can't remember if it was a phone or computer that once changed my friend Martina's name to Martian!

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 In the early days of Microsoft Word the Labour Party published a significant amount of their party documentation spelling their name as "Labor". Not a gripe - I found that one funny (although a damning indictment of those that absented to proofread their output). On a similar note I have a soft spot for a Canadian TV show called Murdoch Mysteries - in it a likeable constable called George Crabtree has just been promoted to Inspector, and they tried to put his name on his door:

christ wrote:

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Bob in Spain wrote:

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However, on a grammatical point, help me out here.

further/farther

I am sure I use them interchangeably but I doubt they are.

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 Farther refers to distance - further means more.

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Actually, they are interchangeable to some extent, more so in British than in American English, with the latter making a more clear-cut distinction between "farther" used in reference to distance.  "Further", however, has additional connotations where "farther" just wouldn't work:

-  "farther" can be used as both an adjective & an adverb & signifies "at a greater distance", be that literal or figurative, but you wouldn't, for example (or at least I hope you wouldn't!), say "the Prime Minister declined to answer farther questions" ;

-  "further", on the other hand, while it may denote "at a greater distance", is also used as an adjective meaning "more" & as an adverb meaning "in addition"/"additionally" (a shorthand form of "furthermore", if you will) AND as a verb meaning "to advance" or "to promote".

I'd go so far as to say that the choice boils down to personal preference except in cases where there can be no question of distance ("the police need to carry out further enquiries to determine the cause of the accident").  That said, I personally would still favour it in statements such as "Penzance is further away from London than Bristol", whereas others would use "farther" in that instance...

Not sure whether that sheds any more light, but I had fun composing it. 

Elegant Point wrote:

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Stircrazy wrote:

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I'll kick off with a story of my own about the bane of CD's life, the auto-correct function on his smart 'phone. 

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 I have always thought CD is female

Also like many others I hate the use of myself instead of I. My friend Louise gets fed up with emails starting Dear Lousie 

..also annoying how my iPad removes punctuation and makes up words and  typos which I only notice after posting. 

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 Yes, my iPhone does the same! So annoying.