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Assume v. Presume

That article reminds me of an incident many years ago, when IRA attacks in mainland UK were happening. The police in a certain town received a telephoned warning, validated by the appropriate code words, that an explosive device had been planted at the station. The police immediately evacuated the area around the police station, sending those people to the sports centre. Which was next door to the (ahem) railway station. You're probably ahead of me by this point... yes the caller had meant the railway station. Fortunately the device was a small one intended to damage the track infrastructure and there were no injuries, but very appropriate for an "assumes/presumes" thread!
 
It's very confusing. Do you call the vehicle a train or a railway train? Why is the bus/coach a rail replacement?
Of course, to add to the confusion, there are road trains - we could blame the Aussies for that one.
 
EEPhil said:
Do you call the vehicle a train or a railway train?
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Well, to be precise it would have to be railway train, which comprises a locomotive and carriages. Any series of things is a "train".

With DMUs there is no locomotive, but what if there is only one self-powered carriage? It's no longer a train!
 
I wonder if in the days of yore there was ever a grumpy old man complaining about there being no E at the end of Old and how dare they say The, it does not even start with a Y and has more letters than Ye.
 
What sort of imbecilic namby-pamby phrasing is this?:

"Thank you for not taking trolleys past this point."

It's not an instruction or prohibition, it's not even a request. Are the snowflakes so snowflake that they'll suffer permanent mental damage if they see a sign with an order written on it?

I know I've seen signs on the way out of villages "thank you for driving carefully", and they wrankle with me a bit, but this takes the biscuit (which is appropriate, at a supermarket!).
 
Black Hole said:
"Thank you for not taking trolleys past this point."
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Perhaps someone thought it stood a better chance of stopping trolleys. The more abrupt "No trolleys past this point" probably doesn't work.

At the station stop for the tram at Nottingham Railway station there is a slope for the tram to go from ground level to the station stop (on a bridge over - at right angles to - the railway tracks). On both ends of the slope there are big signs with wording similar to "No pedestrians beyond this point" plus a crossed out person in a red circle - and a closed gate. Completely ignored by the idiots who want to be hit by the tram. Then there are the morons who, despite numerous "no entry" signs, try to drive up the tram track and get stuck!
Black Hole said:
I know I've seen signs on the way out of villages "thank you for driving carefully"
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Rather pointless as a deterrent. Reminds me of an old favourite expression used by a group of my old work colleagues. If someone dropped an item another would say "careful you don't drop that" - after the event.
 
"Please do not take trolleys past this point."

would seem to get the point across without being unnecessarily abrupt.
 
Black Hole said:
I know I've seen signs on the way out of villages "thank you for driving carefully",
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On second thoughts, are there signs on entry to the village that say "please drive carefully through our village"? In which case the "thank you" makes some sort of sense.
 
One of my pet gripes, apart from abused apostrophes, is the misuse (in my opinion) of the full-stop in British English when writing titles such as Mr, Mrs and Dr.
Other countries - USA and Germany in particular - use the full-stop.
An episode of Tipping Point on ITV1 tried to have it both ways:
IMG_20250422_164629628.jpg

I assume that these are the names as described by the companies and are the registered trade marks. If not, ITV made a boo-boo.
 
TimK2015 said:
What about NATO written as Nato? Seen on BBC News quite regularly.
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That seems to be a very common thing now. I understand media outlets - newspapers, BBC etc - each have their own "style guides" and only capitalising the first letter of an acronym - and not using periods (aka full stops) seems now to be a common standard. Personally I don't like it much.
 
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