Assume v. Presume

[trog]

I don't think it's possible to be startled by news of the death of a close relative (say), although one might be both surprised and shocked. I could startle you in the process of delivering the news, but not by the news.

I beg to differ, smacking you about the head with the news paper that contained the obituary column would surely startle you.

 

[Black Hole]

Isn't that the process of delivering the news?

 

[Black Hole]

I've tried making smaller partitions and this make no difference too.

Either!

 

[gomezz]

Neither!

 

[Black Hole]

I'm not sure whether you are being serious there...

 

[EEPhil]

Daft idiot on BBC News yesterday referred to Stephen Hawking as a theatrical physicist.

 

[MikeSh]

East Anglian Daily Times today:

New on-the-spot fines have come into force today of up to £150 as part of a new crackdown.

The penalty is now more than twice the previous levy of £80.

 

[EEPhil]

The penalty is now more than twice the previous levy of £80.

I'll be generous and say it was an April 1st gag.

 

[Black Hole]

"I am not sure whether this is a bug or how it is expected to work?" (https://hummy.tv/forum/threads/4000t-scheduled-recordings-timings-wrong.8665/post-121928)

We get quite a lot of this: a sentence that is grammatically a statement, but appended by a question mark as if the reader is then supposed to understand it as a question. Is it a rhetorical question? Why not simply phrase it as a grammatical question, if it is intended to receive an answer, and leave the reader in no doubt of the intention?

"Is this a bug, or how it is expected to work?" - five fewer words, and no doubt as to the intention.

 

[EEPhil]

Any competent software department will tell you, it isn't a bug - it's a feature. Problem solved. The question is redundant.

 

[Trev]

Why not phrase it as:
Q. .........??
{rhet}

 

[Luke]

DTR-T1000/1010/2000/2100/2110/4000 (YouView) PVR's

Grocer's apostrophe

Not in this case.

The apostrophe is there as the R's in PVR's is an abbreviation of Recorders. So it's not a grocer's apostrophe.

OK. That implies that a singular Personal Video Recorder should be spelt " PVR' " and not " PVR " like what some of us have been doing.

 

[Black Hole]

Are you going to tell the OED they are wrong then? The apostrophe is accepted by them as an alternative when pluralising acronyms etc.

The dictionaries record how language is used, not how it should be used.

 

[Luke]

Are you going to tell the OED they are wrong then? The apostrophe is accepted by them as an alternative when pluralising acronyms etc.

The position of the OED is the opposite of what you state.
The OED state that the general rule is not to use an apostrophe when forming the plurals of nouns,. The exceptions they describe exclude acronyms.

https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/punctuation/apostrophe

 

[Black Hole]

The only place I find this kind of apostrophe acceptable is after numbers - eg "1920's".

 

[af123]

The only place I find this kind of apostrophe acceptable is after numbers - eg "1920's".

I seem to remember reading a rule about using one when talking about the number of somethings on a page... such as "1000 letter a's", but not something I would write myself.

 

[Black Hole]

I would go with that one too - there is no other way it could be written in the way it is spoken (purely in writing, it could be avoided: "1000 instances of the letter 'a'").

 

[MikeSh]

I would go with that one too - there is no other way it could be written in the way it is spoken (purely in writing, it could be avoided: "1000 instances of the letter 'a'").

In that case why not "1000 letter 'a's "?

 

[Trev]

That's how I would do it. Makes it obvious that you are talking about the letter 'a'.

 

[EEPhil]

I don't really know how to spell Welsh place names, but something on the BBC News looked wrong when it was captioned with "Llundudno live". It was removed part way through the report. Could it be Llandudno?