orangemirror

The one i'm never sure of is if the name ends in s.
i think you just have an apostrophe after the s and leave it (eg James' hat) But i'm never sure so usually think sod it and stick another s on (eg James's hat).
To clear this whole mess up we should just ban people from having names that end in s.

Lorna at Vicenza

The general rule is to just use the apostrophe but an apostrophe S wouldn't be considered really bad form. It became more acceptable in written English when more and more people began to write the name as it would be pronounced .... "James - es house"

Gingerert

Can we ban people from putting in lower case "i"s when they should be upper case then...?

orangemirror

Yeah we probably should do but then I'd be screwed because I can't press two keys at the same time without concentrating really hard.

Gingerert

Fair enough.

Lorna at Vicenza

My pet annoyance at the moment is the number of people asking for advise.

Some of them ask advise from the bored.

Well, I am sometimes bored but not enough to start giving out advice to all the people on the board.

Englishtart

That's the one that confuses me too, I used to be pretty good at English grammar, spelling etc, even got an A level (long time ago,lol) But I can't remember the rule for the 's on names
Apostrophe mistakes don't really bug me, but I do try to get it right myself, just habit I guess

Englishtart

Bluegrass Lass

cindyabs

I've noticed it the other way around- advice when it should be advise. Never mind the noun vs verb thing.

A solution- when someone wants advice then use ask and when someone wants to advise then use tell,

christmasoompa

Can we add people that can't differentiate between your/you're and their/there/they're to the list as well, drives me mad!

And my son is called Charles so I often have to add an apostrophe to his name - I use Charles'.

Mummy in the foothills

This is a message board not an English class. Why does it matter?
I do know he difference between there and their, and the rest. But to tell the truth, on a message board I don't give a flying **** if I make errors once in a while. I type half asleep and occasionally tipsy. What the heck!
So long as it isn't a mile long run on sentence that I can't read without loosing my place, I'm OK with all the other people who type away and don't bother correcting.

scrubbedexpat097

Agree with you...

Leslie

Add to the list "lose" and "loose".

neil

It matters because some people genuinely don't know the difference, and other people's errors perpetuates the problem - some complex situations can be forgiven but get the basics right. I don't know how you can make a typing error between there/their/they're or your/you're - if you make that mistake it's a language error (and you can be forgiven a language error when pissed or half asleep so there are sometimes you can get away with it - just not all the time ).