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Stircrazy


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The weird & wonderful world of English grammar...
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Stircrazy wrote:
christ wrote:

Words on the BBC again: Norris lost to Piastri, but:

"he could have given himself a slither of a chance"

Slither, sliver - they sound similar ...

They do indeed, but that's poor.  no  In the context, however, I'd even have questioned the use of "sliver": it's just wrong.  I think "glimmer" would have been more apposite.

Off topic, I spotted yet another "towing the line" last week...

The Beeb's at it again & I've actually complained about this one, though I doubt I'll get a response to my request for a translation & pointing out that "evidence based" should be hyphenated:

Doctors said that because Trump's remarks were not evidence based, they bared no weight on how they would advise their pregnant patients.

The sentence appears in a report published on the site yesterday covering the fall-out from Trump's outrageous & incomprehensible claim that paracetamol (or Tylenol, as they call it across the Pond) is a potential cause of autism!  It certainly hasn't been corrected.  disbelief



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christ


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"bared no weight"? Seriously?

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Stircrazy


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christ wrote:in

"bared no weight"? Seriously?

That's what I simply could not fathom, whichever way I looked at it, & what prompted my request for a translation in the complaint e-mail.  My "evidence-based" point was entirely by the by, but I just couldn't resist adding it!

I'm not even sure why I bothered reading the article, such was my incredulity at Trump's claim.



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Stircrazy


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Here's another error (actually two) any self-respecting schoolboy/-girl should know better than to make (taken from the Beeb's live text commentary on the Ryder Cup):

An enormous Stars and Stripes flag is draped between two fire ladders - loaned from the local Farmingdale station - when they head from the 14th green to the 15th tee.

disbelief  I give up - again!  Oh, & I'm getting sick & tired of seeing "X drains [i.e. holes] his putt", a curiously unimaginative phrase I've never seen before.  no  That said, I don't really follow golf, so maybe it's been in use for some time.  



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Stircrazy


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Now the Beeb thinks that "deteriorate" (cf. fourth paragraph, or rather, the fifth sentence, as its hacks seem to think that one sentence = one paragraph!) is a transitive verb!  Lazy, ignorant - or both?  disbelief  And if I had a pound for every example of "neither...or" I saw on the site, I'd be a rich woman!  furious 



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