Does no one check anything at the BBC any more?

I don't think anyone is saying that there was a golden age of education, MOnica. But some 'ages' have been worse than others...

There have always been poor teachers and poor information given to children.

Back in the late 1970s DS, aged 8, was given a worksheet on the Anglo-Saxons, this was part of a series published by a well respected educational publisher. DS, now a professional archaeologist, even then knew an awful lot about the Anglo-Saxons, and pointed out several errors on the sheet, that I was able to check and agree were wrong.

I also remember seeing words written and stuck on the walls, with mis-spellings

Well someone is responsible for writing the stuff, and they don’t do a good job of it!

Germanshepherdsmum

Hardly a day passes when I don’t groan at the standard of grammar in our local paper, which I receive daily online. I wonder if the ‘journalists’ ever went to school. Their writing is dire. Perhaps this is the proverbial Normal for Norfolk.

According to my daughter most local online newspapers do not have trained journalist now they just people who upload items onto the site.

choughdancer

One that I'm not sure about is 'critique' used instead of 'criticise'. or 'criticism' Is this right? I always thought that a critique was a review, not necessarily negative, and also not a verb.

Actually, you are sure, as what you say is perfectly correct.

Future generations may choose to write Thank you as one word, not two. These sort of changes do occur.

When I started school in 1956, we were taught to write to-day, to-morrow, then it was changed to to day and to morrow, and finally a couple of years later we were taught that now these words were to be written as today and tomorrow.

Why anyone ever bothered with these changes, I still do not know, unless it was to make typing easier by first getting rid of the hyphens and then getting rid of needing to hit the space bar.

Thankyou can be understood as one word, just as easily as if it is written as two words, the same applies to today or to day.

Where it really matters is if changes in either speech or writing makes it harder to understand what was meant.

Are we on the same wavelength, Dinahmo?

I was tempted to write and explain but in the end couldn't be bothered.

He’s an avid reader and writer so knows what is right but what about the 90% of children without his abilities. So sad.

I could write a whole essay about how 'progressive' teaching methods messed up the teaching of reading, spelling and grammar in the 70s,80s, 90s and the early part of the 2000s. (And incur the wrath of many retired teachers..)

Fortunately for children learning in the last decade the teaching of reading and spelling has improved, being based on research evidence rather than fashion. Grammar is being better taught, too, though in rather a convoluted way. There's no longer such tolerance for the primacy of 'meaning' over accuracy.

So our younger generations might be standing a better chance.

Unfortunately most of the people currently in teaching will have learned by the laissez faire methods...so many of them don't know any better. And it's considered rude to correct people...

Unfortunately sustained reading seems to be dropping off and it's only through sustained reading of well written texts (not the phone sort [grin[) that people really become familiar with the use of good grammar and spelling.

Minerva

I doubt a day goes by without me cringing at grammar and/or spelling mistakes. My daughter went to parents’ evening recently and following the chat was invited to look at my 9 year old grandson’s work. She was astonished to see that he had used the word grief in a piece of writing and his teacher had struck the word through with a red pen, written ‘greif’ next to it and required the poor lad to write it 6 times. Another parent was getting the chat by then so my daughter had no chance to point out the teacher’s ignorance.
Asked about it my grandson shrugged. Lots of teachers can’t spell he said. He had no doubt he was right but saying anything would have gained him a ‘sanction’ so he just did as he was told. A long letter came from school last week, from a different teacher, full of grammatical errors. I was seriously tempted to take a red pen to it and send it back but my grandson begged me not to. He’s an avid reader and writer so knows what is right but what about the 90% of children without his abilities. So sad.

That's so awful Minerva. While I was working in schools I constantly saw mistakes; once bacterium being written on the board as a plural of bacteria! There was also a case of a senior teaching assistant 'correcting' a child who wrote receive with recieve. Wrongly quoted poetry; a teacher writing in a school report that a pupil 'flaunted' the school's uniform rules, which the head teacher couldn't see a problem with! A science teacher insisting on spelling predator preditor, and also insisting that there should be an apostrophe in the possessive its.
I've no problem with anyone who has difficulty in spelling or grammar, BUT when they are teaching it's not okay.

I don't like Americanisms creeping in.
With the recent bed bug problem, I frequently read online that these "critters" are appearing. "Creatures" if you please .... or plain "bugs".

That confirms it’s an Americanism.

Germanshepherdsmum

That appears to be an American website growstuff. ‘Anymore’ started to appear a few years ago - an Americanism. My OED doesn’t recognise it.

Sorry!

dictionary.cambridge.org/grammar/british-grammar/any-more-or-anymore

However Maizie there is a difference between a determiner and an adverb.

I realised from this that I usually use "no longer".

I doubt a day goes by without me cringing at grammar and/or spelling mistakes. My daughter went to parents’ evening recently and following the chat was invited to look at my 9 year old grandson’s work. She was astonished to see that he had used the word grief in a piece of writing and his teacher had struck the word through with a red pen, written ‘greif’ next to it and required the poor lad to write it 6 times. Another parent was getting the chat by then so my daughter had no chance to point out the teacher’s ignorance.
Asked about it my grandson shrugged. Lots of teachers can’t spell he said. He had no doubt he was right but saying anything would have gained him a ‘sanction’ so he just did as he was told. A long letter came from school last week, from a different teacher, full of grammatical errors. I was seriously tempted to take a red pen to it and send it back but my grandson begged me not to. He’s an avid reader and writer so knows what is right but what about the 90% of children without his abilities. So sad.

choughdancer you are right.

One that I'm not sure about is 'critique' used instead of 'criticise'. or 'criticism' Is this right? I always thought that a critique was a review, not necessarily negative, and also not a verb.

It’s so nice to agree Maizie. 😊

Germanshepherdsmum

That appears to be an American website growstuff. ‘Anymore’ started to appear a few years ago - an Americanism. My OED doesn’t recognise it.

I think the explanation they give of the supposed subtle different between 'anymore' and 'any more' is a load of fabricated nonsense.

'Coronated' is driving me mad. But I suppose we'll have to get used to it as dictionary compilers insist that they follow usage, not previous 'rules'.

Whoops, didn't finish sentence. I was saying that it is probably not a recognised authority, but it agrees with what everyone else says.

Germanshepherdsmum

Dare I say, AreWeThereYet, that ‘anymore’ is incorrect. It’s two words, not one.

"" ""

This made me wince, too.

So I looked it up. Well, I googled it . So far, all the websites I have scrolled through accept both "any more" and "anymore", each having a different usage. Admittedly, many of them were American.

The one that made most sense to me said:

"Actually, it’s a relatively modern evolution of the word, especially found in American English but gradually adopted as the more common form. The adverbial “anymore” was, in the past, also two words – and is still used that way by some people. This is the nature of English as an evolving language; we can say with clear confidence that “any more” with two words should be used as a quantifier, whilst “anymore” should be used as an adverb, but that is not to say the phrase “any more” is never used as an adverb, nor that it is necessarily incorrect to do so!"

This was from this (UK) website:

englishlessonsbrighton.co.uk/any-more-vs-anymore/

(Still makes me wince.)

This wasn't a recognised

That appears to be an American website growstuff. ‘Anymore’ started to appear a few years ago - an Americanism. My OED doesn’t recognise it.

growstuff, I wonder why you gave a link to an American site?
Grammar in the US differs from that in the U.K.

But I’d use it with two words in terms of quantity too.

Bellanonna

Agree, momb. I also agree with GSM that any more is two words when referring to time.

Sorry, but it's not.

www.grammarly.com/blog/anymore-vs-any-more/

Germanshepherdsmum

Dare I say, AreWeThereYet, that ‘anymore’ is incorrect. It’s two words, not one.

In this case, one word is correct:

www.grammarly.com/blog/anymore-vs-any-more/