LordGeni

Performing and writing aren't the same as being contemporary chart topping superstars.

Instructions unclear. I'm now surrounded by electricians and my dinner is late!

Not really and there's a good 20 years between most of them and the spice girls.

Tbf, Shakespeare is full of slang, profanity and banter.

Rig the sensor to record them and post the image everywhere on local social media.

Or better - "Ahh, my number three plaything for the evening has arrived". Or just - "Don't worry. You probably won't feel a thing".

Closet thing to Diana my arse. She was a racist shitty popstar who was good looking enough to get a TV gig. Whatever OK magazine may say doesn't change that. At most she was a role model for girls wanting to become rich and famous. As long as they were blessed with her good looks and empty head. No campaigns against landmines or even attempt at promoting empathy etc. Captain Tom was closer to a Diana than her.

It depends on the country, but ultimately they would have to cover the cost. I'd assume that if their laws say that family has to pay, at worst you'd end up with visa restrictions or an arrest warrant if you visited the country in future. The father of my stepkids died penniless in the Philippines. I fell on me to deal with. Being skint I couldn't afford the funeral costs and definitely not repatriation. He also wasn't a particularly nice person or even my relative, so while I begrudged having to deal with it, I tried to do the right thing. Thankfully, the Philipinos friends of his that had notified us were truly incredible. They arranged everything and I ended up paying half (only £100 or so) purely out fairness and gratitude for their help, tact and generosity. Roles reversed, the average brit would have been a nightmare to deal with in comparison. The biggest difference was the speed everything happens there. Warm humid climates and lack of specialised cold storage means they have to bury/cremate bodies within about a week. So, if either a postmortom or repatriation is desired you need to work very quickly. To any Philipinos on here: I assume there are some less agreeable of your countrymen out there, but the fundamental level of humanity that seems to be pervasive in every one of you I've had contact with, is something the UK is severely lacking. Kudos, you guys rock!

Also good people

Careful. They might call you a daft apeth.

In this case the style is specifically designed to increase readability for patients who struggle with English. It's not a lack of awareness of "correct" grammar. It's a conscious decision to sacrifice unnecessary rules in favour of simplicity, readability and to convey the information with the optimal tone for increasing engagement. The whole NHS website is remarkably good at laying out really important advice, that requires very careful wording to be accurate, unambiguous and easy to understand to avoid confusion. When grammar does more to detract from that than improve on it, it's rightly ignored. The reality of what's required of the copy trumps your irritation that the rules you learnt at school aren't obeyed. English grammar is full of cases where the rules only have a material impact under certain conditions. Language is fundamentally about conveying ideas. Achieving that optimally should take priority over any rules that don't help achieve that within the relevant context. Language should adapt for those speaking and reading it, rather than them adapting to it without a good practical reason. It's a reflection not a driver.

If it was misspellings or or grammatical errors that impact the information being conveyed, I might agree with you. As it is, the only person your attitude affects is you. NHS literature, such a OP's example, is written to be intelligible by as many people as possible. Including those with learning difficulties or minimal English skills. The priority being making the expert medical guidance clear to as many people as possible. Distrusting the information because of arbitrary and inconsequential grammar rules, rather than prioritising the expert information the literature contains, would be a spectacular failure of prioritisation.

Yes! A man of culture. An absolutely incredible cast, probably the most stacked cast of comedians ever. It is terrible though, but for a few great gags: "3 farthings for a lump of shit" "That looks nothing like me" "Are you mad women, I haven't got fruit in me loins. Lice! And proud of them". "Killing Plants" Etc.

Also The Man who would be King. Michael Caine, Sean connery and based on the novel written by Rudyard Kipling.

The News. It gets worse every episode.

Nowhere near the extent they do today. We haven't evolved to cope with it being so abundant compared to most of our history.

That's a short way of showing off your ability to miss the point, to avoid admitting you could do better. It really doesn't help you come off any less vile.

When did being unnecessarily accusative become a normal way of making a point. It was a fair point to make, and could have been conveyed in a neutral fashion much more easily. Instead you decided that putting it like a dickhead was the better option. That attitude isn't just unnecessarily rude, it's often counterproductive. There aren't many quicker ways to turn your point from something someone might consider and then agree with, to one that puts them on the defensive and achieves nothing. If you want people to take you seriously and accept your points, offending them never helps. Politeness isn't just about niceities, it's a powerful psychological tool that helps make people listen to you and take your points seriously. What you have achieved here is a good example. Lots of comments about your attitude and very few about the actual point you wanted to make. You undermined your own point.

There are rules. They evolve with our language. What you think of a proper grammar is just an attempt to maintain coherence and consistency between our established language rules and modern evolutions in how we speak. It'll always lag behind, and it full of rules that are necessary in some cases, but unnecessary in many others depending on what's written. It should enhance the clarity of natural speech when written down. We just have a habit of deciding that grammar should take precedent even when it doesn't actually achieve that. That's not to say it isn't crucial in many circumstances but that doesn't make it essential in every case. The fundamental goal of all language is conveying an idea as clearly as possible. The choice of a full stop or comma make no difference to that in OP's original example and their follow up alternative adds unnecessary complication. Ultimately, if a sentence conveys the necessary information as unambiguously as possible, then in practical terms it has the ideal grammar (based on the fundamental purpose of grammar). If that means it doesn't fit with our chosen grammatical rules, it's not because it's fundamentally wrong, but because we've never managed to apply universally applicable rules that keep up with how our language and speech evolve. Grammar exists to enhance the clarity of ideas when written down. To be effective it has to be lead by the spoken language not the other way around. To give an analogy. Rugby was invented when Webb-Ellis picked up the ball during a football match. I very much doubt it would have taken off as a sport if it still used the rules of football, rather than adapting it's own. Language is no different.

I t doesn't really though. That maybe the case under the rules of English grammar, but in these examples it makes no difference to the meaning or comprehension of the statement. Which is the point of grammar. For the NHS particularly, the main goal is conveying the point as simply as possible for people of all levels of education, mental ability and understanding of English. A more verbose sentence wouldn't do that and the readability is unchanged whether a full stop or comma are used.

NHS materials particularly are designed for simplicity and easy readability as they need to understood by people of all abilities. This version maybe better grammatically, but it's too verbose. The original version in your post is stripped back to the key information. Technically it should use full stops rather than commas, but it would make no difference to the readability or information it conveys. Imo, written grammar should exist to ensure consistent readability and lack of ambiguity. I your examples it makes the first criteria worse rather than better. Which is the main goal in this context.

Ok but why does it matter in examples like OP's? There's no ambiguity in the statements and it doesn't impact their readability. It seems analogous to the Oxford comma to me. Useful if it's absence causes ambiguity but largely superfluous otherwise.

Don't worry. I'm British and still do the same. I unfortunately don't have enough knowledge about other languages to say if they are any better, but it does feel like there's quite a gap between what's viewed as appropriate writing style (even if informal) and our natural speech.

What an obnoxious way to make that point. If that's your usual way of entering a conversation, you must be very lonely.

Only because Goofy bullies him.

And red rather than white.

Can't say I blame her. They were probably quieter than the builders and can't get their hands to their mouths to wolf whistle.

Both Vanessa Redgrave and her late mother (Rachel Kempson) were lovely. Rachel was hilariously batty. My stepson wrote to Michael Palin when he was little and there was a hand written and delivered thank you note with frames from The Holy Grail put through the letterbox the next day (he lived close by at the time).

All the decent alternatives can save as fully compatible versions. It's not an issue I've encountered in years.

Huh, I'd barely even registered it as a sound that existed tbh. It's funny the things you can tune into. It's usually textures that get to me.

No. Soap destroys cell walls of bacteria and viruses. It's by its nature antibacterial

What noise?

I think that's a later interpretation. The joke is just meant to be stupid, not an existential commentary.

You were right. It's also more effective at it than sanitiser.

Try Happisburg

So, you thought Basil and sybil were migrant workers rather than Manuel?

The entire earth is closer or farther away from the sun at different times of year due to the elliptical orbit. Which is why the summers in australia can be so dangerous. Not only are they tilted to get more direct sunlight, they are approx 3 million miles closer to the sun at that point of the orbit. The northern hemisphere is only tilted towards the sun during the wider parts of our orbit

Errm.. We do. Wired doorbells are the minority as far as new doorbells go.

Apparently it used to be "you CAN have your cake and eat it" and the phrase changed to become nonsensical with usage.

Obviously because they are getting their food from elsewhere. Hopefully more diffuse wild sources, rather than all concentrated into a disease playground. If you stopped feeding them and then found loads had died, your logic would make more sense. As it is, it boils down to, you stopped doing the thing that attracted the birds to your garden, so now they aren't attracted to your garden anymore. It has no bearing on their health, especially at this time of year when food is plentiful.

Visiting the WW1 battlefields a decade ago and there was a 6' pile of shrapnel, and bomb/bullet casings that had just been ploughed up from a single (relatively small) field. Over a century and they are still bringing up that much each year.

They really do own everything and not just in Cambridge, they are one of the biggest landowners in the country. You can travel from Cambridge to Oxford without leaving land they own.

I have no idea.

I went to school with the son of the couple that provided that image. They got £50

That was pretty common at my school a decade or so earlier. That or the chalk, depending on what he was holding at the time.

Counterintuitively working outside might make it easier for you. The majority of the population have a vitamin D deficiency for a most of the year. Working outside, yours probably only dips for those 3 months. For many others that don't or can't spend as much regular time outdoors, the lack of sunlight tends to put a downer on things for most of the year.

Sponges?

You never had one of those nights?

Weren't they just random snippets of conversations they overheard walking down Oxford Street, or something like that?

100% (apart from the typo). A superb album.