Yesterday, I spent some time chuckling at this. It's the now rather famous Virgin Atlantic complaint letter about the food on board from Mumbai to London. It's hilariously well written, but I must say on closer inspection something began to grate. Why oh why can't people seem to punctuate and spell properly anymore? For example:
"What sort of animal would serve a desert with peas in?" Hmmm - there MIGHT be peas in the desert, I suppose, if there were a greenhouse and good irrigation?
"Could bring it crashing to it's knees...." Arrrggghhh! The misplaced apostrophe. This particularly gets my goat. Its is the possessive, and with an apostrophe it of course means something completely different. I also have a major gripe, whilst still dealing vaguely with aviation, about the use of an apostrophe in the shortening of Flight Attendants, FAs. Why on earth would anyone want to put an apostrophe there? It's a plural, my dears. You're not talking about the FA's suitcase (singular), or the FAs' uniforms (plural). This rule also of course also applies to CDs, DVDs and PCs, etc.
And don't get me started on your and you're, their and they're, and the random use (or complete absence) of commas, colons and semi colons.
I just wonder whether schools (except mine) actually ever teach these things. Can you tell I used to teach English?
Ok, end of rant. I feel better now.
London, I always look forward to seeing you again.
7 months ago