Ok folks, I know I’ll be thoroughly taken to the woodshed for being so uppity, but I can’t help myself:
To not win = LOSE
Not winning = LOSING
Not tight = LOOSE
In order to stop your bike you BRAKE
The process of stopping your bike is BRAKING
The process of your wheel failing DURING braking is BREAKING
Yeah, yeah, yeah, I know what some are going to say. In defense I had two teeth extracted yesterday which brought out my cantankerous nature… But no offense is meant to offending misspellers. Simply education.
Good work. Was considering a similar post but decided not to after seeing how touchy some people got by having the p*ss taken out of there(sic) grammer(sic).
‘There’ is a place i.e. My dictionary is over there.
‘Their’ indicates possession i.e.Their grasp of English was poor.
‘They’re’ is an abbreviated form of ‘they are’ i.e. They’re in remedial English class.
‘Your’ is a possessive pronoun i.e Your grammar is terrible.
‘You’re’ is an abbreviated form of ‘you are’ i.e. You’re a bit lacking in your appreciation of correct syntax.
I’ll also admit that sometimes the bad grammar and spelling gets to me (years of my mother telling me to never put “at” at the end of a sentence, etc…).
We *do *need to remember that there are many posters from other countries who do quite well considering English is not their first language.
Also, don’t you also find it ironic that the spellchecker dictionary for this forum lacks words like “ironman,” “triathlon,” and “triathlete.”?
In defense of people who make typos and grammatical errors, I am the author of many books , and I still make lots of errors.
BTW, here are examples of the typo and grammatical errors that bother me the most: “I complete in alot of triathlons.” “The eventual winner passed my training partner and I half way through the bike ride.” “wreck havoc” instead of “wreak havoc” “chomping at the bit” instead of “champing at the bit” “button down the hatches” instead of “batton down the hatches” “I could care less” instead of “I couldn’t care less.”
And here are some of the stupidest things sports announcers say: “The team with the most courage wins.” Hogwash. “Now we’ll see who want to win this one the most.” Baloney. (Also grammatically incorrect.) “The _______ (fill in team name) has a record of 10 and 2 when Joe Blow makes 8 or more rebounds.” So what? “Joe Blow is the best athlete at his position in the league.” Says who? Give us some evidence. “Joe Blow makes all the players around him better.” Riiiight. Announcers seem to think that, even though team A beat team B by only one point, team A did everything right during the game and team B did nothing right. Give me a break.
I saw myself in this post,and English is my language(could not tell from my school grades) my excuse being in a hurry and not working in a field were i use my spelling and other skills enough,the amount of time it took me to write this(typing skills) my wife would have written a novel,but she can not rebuild the car engine.Lets not get to hung up on the spelling and grammar, people have good things to offer but might not have the same level of skills as you,i have seen this kind of thing on another forum and it almost ruined it.Thanks and sorry for all of my future grammar mistakes.
I definitely got a kick out of this thread…my grandmother was a college professor, and although she died when I was 8 (20 years ago), she had a huge influence on me, and I tend to notice and cringe at poor grammar.
However, I can butcher a cliche with the best of them…so thanks for clearing some of those up for me! “Champing” at the bit? Never knew that.
My personal favorites are when professional athletes haven’t heeded the advice of Crash Davis and learned their cliches.
My all-time favorite comes from the late-80s when the LA Kings were in the playoffs. While being interviewed after losing the game that put the Kings on the brink of elimination, Luc Robitaille said “Our backs are against the 8-ball.”
These are great. They remind me of horse race footage and audio that I heard on a sports bloopers show. The race was fairly eventless. The humor came from hearing the announcer say the lead horse’s name over and over. The horse was named “Hoof Hearted”.
You know, Jack M, I actually considered whether or not I violated my signature rule with this thread. I probably did violate the dictum with my semi-rant on John Cobb’s status last week so I knew I trod on thin ice here. In the end however, because comic relief comprised at least 50% of my reason for posting, the direction this thread has taken vindicates my dual purpose of education and humor (or is that humour?) There is certainly a lot of folks here more funny than me!
At any rate, this has been a good break from the rigors of aero testing and wind tunnels.
