Detailing coach rooves

[Mark Tatlow]

Try entering the incorrect 'definately' in the search box on the forum index page and see how many hits you get, as well as the names of the culprits

Danny

Aghhh look, there I am.............

The wonderful thing about language is that it is living and will change to match the majority's usage. So if we carry on like this the English language will definately change such that we are right and Danny becomes wrong........

[essdee]

Danny, Mark, guys,

I gave up worrying over twenty years ago, when I saw a shop sign proudly pronouncing:

'Fresh'ly cut sandwiches'

And that was before 'txting' created a whole new everyday langauge anyway. And yes, again, I was taught at school never, ever, to start a sentence with 'And'.

(Nor to finish one so.)

BBC received English? I am still laughing at the BBC Radio 4 announcer yesterday who chirpily told us of Rudolf Hess having spent years 'in Spandau Ballet'. Lord Reith must be suffering friction burns.

Chew on this one - 'porage' or 'porridge?'

C u l8r etc etc,

Steve

[LesGros]

Mark Tatlow Wrote:

Aghhh look, there I am.............
The wonderful thing about language is that it is living and will change to match the majority's usage. So if we carry on like this the English language will definately change such that we are right and Danny becomes wrong...

Hi Mark,
On the other hand, if you search for "definitely" you will see that "definately" is definitely outnumbered, so your predicted change could take a while.

[martin goodall]

I seem to have started something. (Talk about going off-thread!)

Train station - I agree. (Yuk! or to give it the correct spelling, Ugh!)

Porage or porridge - both spellings are equally acceptable (as seen on the packets of different manufacturers), although I can't stand the stuff myself. So ugh! again (but for a different reason).

On this forum, which doesn't have an in-built spell-checker, typographcial errors can easily be mistaken for mis-spellings, so maybe we shouldn't be too harsh about this. (On the other hand, A and I are sufficiently far apart on the keyboard for "definately" to be a mis-spelling rather than a typo.)

And then there is the question of starting a sentence with 'And' or 'But'. It is not best practice, but fairly common journalese, and so acceptable in relatively informal speech and writing. I certainly do it myself if the context seems to justify it (as witness the example at the beginning of this paragraph).

I entirely agree that language is dynamic and subject to continuous change. So spellings and grammatical constructions that were considered incorrect some years ago might well be acceptable now.

(Thinks: Maybe we ought to get back to detailing our coach roofs! Or as the French say: "Retournons à nos moutons")

[Jan]

I took the opportunity yesterday evening of looking up Fowler’s Modern English Usage. It very definitely gives the plural of ROOF as ‘ROOFS’. In a separate note on ‘FS/VES’ plural endings (and verb endings), Fowler says – “As the change [between these two alternatives] is far from regular, and sometimes in doubt, an alphabetical list of the chief words concerned follows.” In this list, the plural of HOOF is given as either HOOFS or HOOVES, but in the case of ROOF, he states – “No -VE endings”. This applies both to the verb ‘to roof’ (past participle ‘ROOFED’) and to the plural of the noun (‘ROOFS’).

I also had a glance in the Oxford Companion to the English Language. On the F/V alternation, the authors observe that so engrained is the tendency to F/V alternation that handkerchiefs and roofs are often pronounced with ‘V’ [although the unstated implication is that this usage is incorrect].

Admittedly my copy of Fowler is rather old (the 1950 reprint of the first (revised) edition), but my copy of the Companion is more recent (1996).

So what has this got to do with railway modelling? Not a lot, except perhaps as yet another example of the ferocious quest of the members of this august Society for accuracy (“getting it ALL right”!)

It seems odd to me that a significant number of us go to great lengths to get it all right when modelling the past, but we strive to use modern parlance when discussing it

[Guy Rixon]

And sometimes the old spelling matters on the model. I'm building stock for a SECR, 1905 layout. The SER wrote "break van" on the sides of goods brake vans and the SECR changed that to "brake van" when the joint management committee started. There might have been some transitional period when they changed the company initials (twice, once to SEC&DR then again to SECR) but left the rest of the lettering unchanged.