Apologies for a) causing and continuing the thread drift, & b) the utterly, utterly boring nature of it, but:
reheat module wrote:Personally, I'd remove the word 'ever' in your phrase 'seldom ever' as may be indicative of tautology, or confliction, but otherwise no issues.
Well tautology is a matter of style over correctness (you can use a tautology, it's just that some see it as unnecessary), but fair cop, guv - you've got me there.
It's lawyer-speak to use tautologies sometimes; it enables you to squirm out of situations more easily than using direct words. I purposefully avoided using the word "never" writing my post, because I assume (as I always do) that I'm probably incorrect, and I was waiting for someone with more brains than I to find some obscure rule I don't know about that says it can be correct to use an apostrophe to pluralise a noun. It's easier to keep yourself clean by using more words than some consider necessary over using direct words like "never" (hence this mini-essay). So yeah, my bad.
Not that you did it, RM, but on the general point, I don't know what it is about grammar and spelling that makes people comb through your post looking for other spelling and grammar flaws. Like "haha! You're not such a smartarse!" Yeah, true, but that doesn't stop someone from being correct about the original point. In this instance, all I was doing was trying in a friendly way to let others know the correct way, because the moment you point it out to specific people, you're called a grammar-nazi, told to get a life, got no friends, sad, etc... So I am often left wondering how we correct grammar if those who make the errors don't notice it, and when you tell them, instead of going "oops, I missed an apostrophe" (which, let's be honest, is a perfectly forgivable mistake!) they come out all guns blazing asking how on earth you dare question the integrity of their incorrect language use.
I hasten to add that I make as many spelling & grammatical mistakes as anyone else (probably more), but that doesn't stop the correct rule from being pointed out.
Anyway, as I said in the post above; you add an s, (or an es as the case may be). For lens, I take it to be "lenses". Unless there's some other obscure semi-Latin rule that I don't know about.
Buuuuut there we go. A long post about grammar. Waheeey! I doubt anyone's still here reading this.
Rampvan wrote:Your spelling of "Daily Mail" is incorrect
Factually, I don't consider that it is. They fail at a rate which is daily.