Personal improved spell checking regime

[whole diary]

[grahame]

Due to a lot of disappointment with my very unacceptable spelling standards, I have declared them to be no longer fit for purpose.  I am pleased to learn of modern spell checkers; I have got one and it will be an ongoing process to invest time to meet with your aspirations. I note/understand your concerns and hopefully will meet with and equal the standards you yourself apply. Hopefully I will be able to ascertain that as I invest a lot of time into this, you will see a lot higher standard, but I specuate that we'll have much else to talk about and the occasional slip onwards will be acceptable.

From the BBC^» (British Broadcasting Corporation - home page)

Conservative MP^▸ (Member of Parliament) Jacob Rees-Mogg began his new role as the leader of the House of Commons by issuing a style guide to all staff members in his new office.

His rules, according to ITV News, include banning his staff from using words such as "very", "lot" and "got" when writing to other MPs and members of the public.

Mr Rees-Mogg, who was brought into government by the new prime minister this week, has also asked staff in his new office to use imperial measurements and refer to non-titled males as "esquire".

The guidance was drawn up by Mr Rees-Mogg's North East Somerset constituency team some years ago, but has now been shared with officials in his new office.

What has been banned:

Very • due to • ongoing • hopefully • unacceptable • equal • too many "I"s • yourself • lot • got • speculate • invest (in schools etc) • no longer fit for purpose • I am pleased to learn • meet with • ascertain • disappointment • I note/understand your concerns

Rules
- Organisations are SINGULAR
- All non-titled males — Esq.
- There is no. after Miss or Ms
- M.P.s — no need to write M.P. after their name in body of text
- Male M.P.s (non-privy councillors) — in the address they should have Esq., before M.P. (e.g. Tobias Ellwood, Esq., M.P.)
- Double space after fullstops
- No comma after ‘and’
- CHECK your work
- Use imperial measurements

[martyjon]

- Use imperial measurements

Shouldn't Parliament repeal the european legislation banning use of imperial measurements first so as to allow the lowly paid M.P.'s to sell fruit and veg at their local fruit and veg market stall when performing their role as a market trader in their second jobs.

I bet his own wife can't go into her local supermarket and buy potatoes by the pound for his 'bangers and mash' or nutmeg by the ounce for grating onto his 'rice pudding'. Oh!, he hasn't abolished supermarkets yet but when he does his wife will have to go to their local greengrocers for the potatoes, the butchers for the sausages, the grocer for the rice and nutmeg. She'll have to find a milkman to deliver the family's daily milk supply in glass bottles and while shes at it, find a baker to deliver the daily bread, unwrapped, selected from a wicker basket carried on the arm of said baker.

The mans a ?@£$*%^.

[CyclingSid]

I presume that means that about the only country stili using Imperial (?) measurements is USA. Presumably more American trains, and less Japanese? Hope everybody can remember the difference between Imperial and American pints etc.

[grahame]

Hope everybody can remember the difference between Imperial and American pints etc.

Imperial pints are served at room temperature and typically contain around 4.7% alcohol. American pints are served ice cold, are much lighter in colour, and are somewhere around 3% ?

[Surrey 455]

Presumably Jacob will demand to be paid his salary in guineas in a drawstring velvet money bag.

[chuffed]

This forum would just not be the same without the rich seem of typos from grahame's fingers !

[GBM]

This forum would just not be the same without the rich seem of typos from grahame's fingers !

Please Grahame, "carry on as usual"  

[JayMac]

Shouldn't Parliament repeal the european legislation banning use of imperial measurements first

Point of order. The EU^» (European Union - about) has never banned the use of imperial measurements in the UK^▸ (United Kingdom). Metrication began in 1965 under Harold Wilson, eight years before the UK joined the EEC. It was a slow process that eventually led to the Weights & Measures Act 1985 - legislation wholly inacted by Westminster with zero input from Europe. That act was updated in 2000 to ban the pricing and weighing of loose goods solely in pounds and ounces. Dual pricing was, and still is, allowed.

Had the EU mandated the UK go metric then I don't think they would have let us continue using miles and pints. The truth is the EU has never interfered in the UK's slow conversion to metric.

[Red Squirrel]

I presume that means that about the only country stili using Imperial (?) measurements is USA. Presumably more American trains, and less Japanese? Hope everybody can remember the difference between Imperial and American pints etc.

Myanmar, Liberia and the USA are popularly considered to be the only non-metric countries, though Myanmar and Liberia have announced plans to go metric in recent years.

The USA uses 'US Customary' units, which are based on the Imperial system but differ in important ways - a US pint is 473.176473ml, whilst an Imperial pint was 568.26125ml. The US hundredweight is also smaller than its old Imperial equivalent, so whereas a short (US) ton is 907.185kg, an Imperial ton was similar to a tonne at 1016.047kg.

[broadgage]

Hope everybody can remember the difference between Imperial and American pints etc.

Imperial pints are served at room temperature and typically contain around 4.7% alcohol. American pints are served ice cold, are much lighter in colour, and are somewhere around 3% ?

I would prefer Imperial pints to be served a LITTLE below room temperature, in a well designed public house this can be achieved by keeping the beer casks in a natural cool cellar. In more modern premises, a similar temperature may be achieved by MODERATE use of electric refrigeration.

BTW^▸ (by the way), I am not very keen on duvets either, dodgy foreign invention. Did not some notable person state that duvets, ice cold "beer" and the like,  "should be sent back to the continent where they belong"
No nation that uses duvets has ever won a major war.
The proper bedding for an Englishman is wool blankets.
Does the speaker in the house of lords sit upon a folded duvet ? no of course not! he sits upon the WOOLsack.

[Robin Summerhill]

Shouldn't Parliament repeal the european legislation banning use of imperial measurements first

Point of order. The EU^» (European Union - about) has never banned the use of imperial measurements in the UK^▸ (United Kingdom). Metrication began in 1965 under Harold Wilson, eight years before the UK joined the EEC. It was a slow process that eventually led to the Weights & Measures Act 1985 - legislation wholly inacted by Westminster with zero input from Europe. That act was updated in 2000 to ban the pricing and weighing of loose goods solely in pounds and ounces. Dual pricing was, and still is, allowed.

Had the EU mandated the UK go metric then I don't think they would have let us continue using miles and pints. The truth is the EU has never interfered in the UK's slow conversion to metric.

You just beat me to it...

This is exactly the sort of drivel that we have been fed for years beyond count, a goodly proportion of which by a journalist who now appears to have conned his way into no.10 Downing Street. Just a few examples of the carp (I think that's the right spelling...)  that we have been treated to in this country for years and years:

EU to ban traditional barometers
EU bans giving dog a bone
EU vote to ban porn
EU to ban diabetics from driving
EU bans dipping olive oil in restaurants
EU bans dipping olive oil in restaurants
EU proposals to ban all cars pre 92
EU bans claim that water can prevent dehydration
EU wants to ban you from making your own investments.
MEP^▸ (Member of European Parliament) plans EU build ban on cars faster than 100mph
EU Plasma TV Ban
EU demands smacking ban in UK
Marmite to be banned by EU!
New EU law could effectively ban motorsport
cherished numbers to be banned?

Those are just a few I dug up this morning from another forum on which I used to contribute. There are plenty of others out there should you care to take a look.

And have you ever wondered why all these stories are written in the future tense ie. the EU is always "going" to ban something. And you ever wondered why the EU never seems to get around to actually banning it?

If more people did the outcome of a vote in June 2016 might have been rather different...

[johnneyw]

If anyone bans the use of beginning replies to questions with the word "so", I would have one subject less to rant about.

[Red Squirrel]

So what I don't understand is this: If we buy petrol by the litre, why do we measure fuel economy in miles per kilowatt-hour? Or am I getting befuddled again?

[Robin Summerhill]

So what I don't understand is this: If we buy petrol by the litre, why do we measure fuel economy in miles per kilowatt-hour? Or am I getting befuddled again?

Ah - you might buy petrol by the litre, but I buy mine in multiples of 4.546 litres. It makes the calculation of miles per kwh much easier

I suppose JRM's chauffeur calculates consumption in leagues per bushel

[stuving]

BTW^▸ (by the way), I am not very keen on duvets either, dodgy foreign invention. Did not some notable person state that duvets, ice cold "beer" and the like,  "should be sent back to the continent where they belong"
No nation that uses duvets has ever won a major war.
The proper bedding for an Englishman is wool blankets.
Does the speaker in the house of lords sit upon a folded duvet ? no of course not! he sits upon the WOOLsack.

Blankets will only get you so far - as I remember from the 50s, lying in bed on nights when there was ice in the inside of the windows, you needed to add a quilt - or eiderdown - or even a counterpane. All of which words, like duvet, show how closely linked bedding vocabulary (and maybe usage)  is in French and English.

Duvet in French means down (whether eider or other bird). It's actually cognate with down, from Old Norse dunn.

The object in French is a couette - meaning quilt. Again, these are the same word, from the Latin culcita. (And, if you go back far enough, feather quilts were used under as well as over the sleeper, to soften a straw mattress.)

Another old term for a quilted bedcover is courte pointe, literally short stitch. While it's tempting to see that as the origin (you pull a stitch tight through the quilt) it actually comes from the same source as couette.

Courtepointe meaning a bed quilt was copied by Mrs. Malaprop's Bedding Company as counterpane.

We use eiderdown, in a way that parallels duvet, to mean a bed quilt. In repayment for counterpane we gave the French that one as édredon.

I suspect the history of bed quilts may involve their use without blankets more often that you imagine. After all, the key innovation was just to add a washable loose cover, but sheets can be used instead. Of course the first duvets we had were called continental quilts, and seen as more Scandinavian than French - I suspect they only took them up in a big way around the time we did. So why the change in name, to a word that doesn't mean that anyway?

But as to why French and German pillows are such a silly shape ...