Occasional spelling tips for students.

I get the manner/manor mistake frequently in student essays. I also got it in an email from Wiggle Cycles today:

and all manor of other material manipulation to build the sexiest frame designs possible. 

They want me to spend £4000 on a bike. A: bikes are good, or bad, not 'sexy' or 'unsexy'. B: Why would I trust them to put together a bike if they can't put together a sentence?

Happily for Wiggle and my students, I have a handy illustration designed to aid differentiation between 'manner' and 'manor'. It's by 14 year-old artist Freya VanEvery of Canada, to whom I owe my thanks.

Essential office décor

I've just received a packet of posters to grace the walls in my office. They're all grammar and spelling-related.

The idea is that I can save my vocal cords by silently pointing to the appropriate poster(s). In extremis I can photograph the relevant bit and mail the snaps to the student… or colleague.

It's a shame that we have to spend so much time on basic literacy: clearly some schools are failing. It's not just pedantry - English is a stunningly flexible and subtle language, so an inability to utilise it well limits intelligent people to a horrendous degree. Get the basics right, then move on to the complex ideas you're trying to express.

Illiteracy must stop. Full Stop.

I won't name the famous child protection charity at whose headquarters I found this abortion of a notice. But the title of this post may prompt you.

Quite frankly, I consider exposing vulnerable children to this kind of linguistic abuse to be a form of cruelty by itself. And as to 'purcharse', I hear it's the street word for a rather unsavoury sexual practice involving something called alocohol.

A new addiction

Everyone watching the lunar eclipse tonight?

Meanwhile, you may like this snarky, pedantic website, picking up Facebook spelling and grammatical errors. Not being in FB, I like it a lot.

I didn't know the Orkneys had a football team

In the window of the bookies' next door to my flat.

A new month's resolution

As well as Vole, I have quite an ordinary name - one British people will have heard and maybe even seen, though it's a classic Irish one, simplified for an anglophone society.

Thanks to my parents, I've endured 35 years of misspellings: on meeting someone with the same name, conversation inevitably turns to the variety of distortions committed upon it.

In many ways, I'm quite resigned to people hearing my name and having a stab at it. No problem. What I fundamentally object to, however, is people who have only ever seen my name spelled correctly on screen or on paper - sent by me - and yet continually and consistently get it wrong. One individual has mailed me 350 times in the last 8 months, and has never once, not even accidentally, got it right. It smacks of laziness and contempt, of taking me for granted.

I have a new tactic. Whenever it happens in future, I'm going to respond by deliberately misspelling that person's name, however simple it may be. Let's see how long it takes them to get it right.

Childish? Perhaps. But fair.

That'll show them (or, Why the SU is a useless waste of space)

My own union, the University and Colleges Union, is holding a mass demonstration in London with the National Union of Students to protest the privatisation/abolition of higher education.

Our Students' Union is advertising the event thusly:

Oh dear. Apart from the horrendous spelling mistake, all it says to me is that this demo is a bit of a lark before getting on with the serious business of shopping. Shout a few slogans about education-as-consumerism, then get down to Oxford Street with your credit card.

No wonder the government doesn't give a feck for student opinion. I'd go with Pol Pot and send all the intellectuals out to the fields, only the SU leadership wouldn't qualify…

Blossom's a bit peeved by this too.

Honk if you're illiterate

Right - home for cleaning, cooking and MORE WORK!

But I'll leave you with some beautiful photographs. I know it's mean, and that there are plenty of people on the left who can't spell, but someone has taken the time to collect images of all the wrongly-spelled anti-Obama placards, including some proclaiming the superiority of the English language.

This one really confused me for a minute.

Enjoy.

The bad taste of Wolverhampton

I won't identify the particular takeaway food establishment this comes from, but I'm very happy that this delicacy is back on the menu:

Meanwhile, food packaging for dummies: check out the warning.

Stop! Grammar Time!

OK, not grammar really, but who could resist such a pun?

Shamefully, two of these pictures are taken in a UNIVERSITY coffee shop. What is the point of trying to instil literacy into students when their own institution can't be bothered?

I just need to unload

I've seen some strange things today (and yesterday).

The Waterstones notice above the cycling books reading 'Peddle Power' - I don't think it was a sophisticated joke about selling cycling books.

Also on cycling-related matters, I treated myself to new handlebar tape, lights, lock and pump today. I didn't choose the lights available for £423.99! Now, I love cycling gadgetry. My ultimate bike is the Moulton New Series Double Pylon (c. £10,000) though any Moulton would be heaven. I have a 196os Moulton F-Frame (not my bike pictured) which needs serious restoration by an expert before I can ride it and an old Viscount racer which Neal's done up for me. But. Almost £500 for a set of lights. That's not rational.

Outside the bike shop, a man listens to a radio pressed to his ear. A silent radio. They're coming, you know.

Finally, some etiquette advice. If you go into a local pub in the UK, you don't take the stool at the end of the bar. It belongs to someone called Bob, even if he's not there. Even if you've been coming to this pub for 10 years. Even if Bob's dead. It's his place. Likewise at the swimming pool, there's a system called queuing, which is a fair way of providing space according to the order in which people arrive. I've been swimming three times a week for a year now, so I'm not Bob, but I know who the Bobs are. They arrive early, queue and wait patiently, swim in a stately fashion and nobody gets in their way.

Today, we were all patiently waiting for the 11 o'clock shift. At 11.55, two women walk in and go straight to the front. They object to waiting until 11 and stay at the head of the queue. Then when they appear in the pool, they hog a lane to themselves. Which is fine, if they're going to use it. But they don't. I did my 44 lengths in the time they took to do 7, in between a lot of chatting and standing around in such a way that nobody else could use it. Selfish gits. Sorry, it's really annoyed me: public amenities should be used with regard for the needs of others - it's how community works.

Oh yes, the other weird thing. Listening to the posh bloke (Ed Stourton) on Radio 4's Today programme, playing and discussing Slayer. Apparently the band's very popular amongst US soldiers as a soundtrack to killing Iraqis.