Pedant alert...

[guest18]

Look I know it's petty, and I'm quite sad to care ( ) but when the rest of the forum is so educational and (mostly) intelligent it really really grips me, like the visual equivalent of nails on a blackboard.... so please bear with me for the following announcement...

When you use mechanical assistance to slow your motorcycle you use brakes, it is a brake caliper you work on when they sieze, once you have slowed down you have braked the motorcycle. It does not have and never has had "breaks" fitted 

When you fall over and damage the bone on your arm, you break it, when you have a rest from working on it you have a break, and so on..

Now I'll give you all a break from my pedantry about brakes   

Thanks all, no offence meant to anyone, normal abuse may now continue... 

[guest987]

I'm so glad you didn't say ' bare with me '

However this forum has members from a very wide spectrum. We don't have an entrance exam or have to have a common minimum standard of education in order to contribute.
The forum is all about riding, maintaining and enjoying a variety of bikes in a variety of circumstances.

I for one will not get upset over bad grammer {  } or speling { }. It's all in the contribution made to the forum.
It's not what the forum gives to you. It's what you give the forum that's important.

Rob .

[Steve H]

Some time ago I used to work for Lucas Girling in the car brake design department. In the yellow pages we were listing in the "Car Breakers" section.

[guest18]

I'm so glad you didn't say ' bare with me '

Lol, I promise not to 

I take your points, and I thought long and hard before posting my request. I continue to learn lots from those on the forum, on the other hand now, some have learned a small detail, unimportant in itself, but somewhere down the line it may make a small difference to how something they write is percieved by others with a narrower view than those on this fine forum.

Like I said, it doesn't really matter, it just distracts me from what I read, so I thought I would ask (hopefully nicely!) that contributors make a small change to the way they write. If they do, great, if they don't, never mind. Variable spelling didn't hold back Mr Shakespeare by all accounts, and I work with some people who are blindingly intelligent and who have extremely unusual ways of spelling some words. So you are correct, nothing to get upset about. 

(But please don't ask me to explain my job roll or order stationary for the office..    )

[mini-thumper]

Some time ago I used to work for Lucas Girling in the car brake design department. In the yellow pages we were listing in the "Car Breakers" section.

I once advertised an open-top Canadian canoe in the classifieds of my local evening paper only to discover it listed under "Wedding Dresses"! Weirdly I sold it for a good price.

Boyd

[Richard]

I'm not that surprised about the 'Open Top Canadian Canoe" advert selling well.  Sounds a bit like "Russian Bride" but more descriptive.  I am now in imaginative boggling mode.

I must admit that on many occasions now I have had to swallow back my own tendency towards pedantry, or terminological exactitude as I prefer it to be known, on the Thumper list.  Perhaps we should have a subsection of 'Rants' for our own use.

Incidentally inadvertent mis-spelling doesn't count.

Richard

[tj63]

Last time I had a go at someone on a forum for this sort of thing, it turned out they were dyslexic, so I just grin and bear it now   

But I know what you mean, Smudge.


Trevor

[Steve H]

My main gripe is text-speak in forum postings. I can understand (but refuse to use it) on mobile phones, but when you have a full keyboard in front of you it just strikes me as being lazy.

[guest24]

txt spk in a forum is poor 

I get people at work emailing me in text speak and it bugs me to the extent that when I respond to them, I correct all their silly abbreviations with the proper word. Needless to say, they respond with a 'thx' message; grrr. Working on an IT helpdesk, I get to see loads of emails every day. Amusingly, you can't fix a computer software or data error by using abbreviations, or maybe that is the problem that the user has introduced to their test system

On the subject of bare bears...  In America you have the right to bear arms, but is it good to arm bears 

[Richard]

Me, I hate smileys...............

[guest18]

My main gripe is text-speak in forum postings. I can understand (but refuse to use it) on mobile phones, but when you have a full keyboard in front of you it just strikes me as being lazy.

I have a boss who insists on peppering his emails and letters with needless abbreviations and random punctuation, (particularly excessive use of multiple exclamation marks). The one that currently annoys me most is "ty" instead of Thank you, I mean really, if writing thank you takes too much time and effort just how sincere are his thanks? 

[Steve Lake]

We don't have an entrance exam or have to have a common minimum standard of education in order to contribute.
Rob .

A grate relief to me  , I agree with everything everyone has said......so why do we all use ...SWMBO?.....just a thought
pip pip

[guest868]

Technically when you split the bones in your arm you fracture them. The term breaking is simply for lay people... 
Oh and the yoke/yolk thing winds me up too.

[guest18]

 

[SRXer]

My Honda CG was put in with the cars in our local paper.
got it sold the next day...the guy said it made him think about it more before hand.




I only recently found out that stationary is not stationery. 

Nathan