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Assume v. Presume

But a medium sounds a bit spooky.

A bacteria is quite common, even in the uk.
 
Twice today I have heard

Myself and [person] [did something].

Is it people who realize me and my mate is wrong, but think my mate and I sounds pretentious?
 
And referring to 'myself' doesn't? WTF peeps use 'myself' when they could use 'I' or 'me' completely escapes me.
No, those peeps also don't realise 'my mate and me' is wrong on two counts (usually).
 
There was a guy at my work doing that years ago. He seemed to think it was the right way to speak. He used "yourself" instead of "you" too.

I suppose it is less direct, and subservient (obsequious), much like people who have been taught it's rude to point indicate with a hand instead of a finger. That's still pointing, isn't it? I think the point about it being rude to point is not to point at somebody in some way disfigured or whatever, as opposed to pointing when indicating a direction or object. Point?

The weathermen/women annoy me. If it's not this bloody so-called "meteorological Spring" (doesn't exist!), it's saying "as well" when there is a perfectly good word "also". I even heard "as well" used when the correct word would have been "either"!
 
gomezz said:
But I think only when referring to it as a species or type not as an individual?
Click to expand...
The singular form should be used when referring to a particular species as a whole, plural when referring to multiple species or more than one (but not all) of one species.

"There is one species of bacterium in this Petri dish"

"There are several bacteria on the microscope slide"

But the worst crime against English in the example I gave was using the plural form with the singular pronoun (twice)!
 
I gave some thought to why this all matters - we understand what is meant even if exact grammar is lacking.

The conclusion I came to is that spoken language is a lossy communications channel, so it is useful to have some redundancy and error checking/correction in the data stream. When the channel noise margin is high, any data errors at source (malformed sentences) can be corrected on reception, but if the noise margin is low a correctly formed sentence provides greater probability of being understood when reception may be incomplete.

Written language isn't lossy, but it is permanent so it is open to analysis and pedantry as if it were intended for a lossy channel (which is its origin).
 
Ah ha. We are now re-entering the realms of whether or not 'either' can only refer to two options again.
In another topic, I wrote'I myself...' (for a laugh) and realised that this must be wrong as to say 'Myself did so and so' is so obviously wrong. So is 'myself' only a replacement word for 'me'? If so, then 'I myself' is double stupid (other than when done deliberately for effect).
 
Not really. I deliberately didn't comment on the use of me, myself and I (and I'd forgotten about either). I realise Mike0001 was being humorous - I was objecting to his overuse of "or".
 
Seen on BBC news this evening. At the bottom of the screen 'Sophie {someone} at St. Thomas' Hospital' and at the top of the same screen 'Live. St. Thomas's Hospital' :roflmao:.
There was also a street in Ryde, IoW that had the same thing at opposite ends.
 
It's an abbreviation so I suppose it should really be S't, although for us older people who wer drug up proper, it's St. It's those damn Yankees that are screwing our language and grammar conventions, not to mention txt spk.
And whether it was St. or St on the Beeb, I was not sufficiently compus mentus to notice, for which I apologise profusely.
Note to self: Pay attention at the back.
 
In the bbc news app, it is St Thomas at least once, though I cannot guarantee consistency.
 
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