Assume v. Presume

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