What (if anything) have recent Literacy initiatives taught our children?

If you don’t know by now ..

On about spelling, can someone please explain why I write loose and sound the word with a short oo (as in the rope is a bit loose). Then when sounding lose it is given a long oooo (he is going to lose the game) Yet choose is given a long oooo and chose a short oo.
I am positive when at primary school very early 50s choose and loose were both sounded the same ie long ooo.

My writing style softened with preparing advice and reports to clients in words that they could easily understand and which were unambiguous . A more casual approach if you like.

Amol Rajan drives me mad - and he seems to be everywhere now!

Grandmajean

I do find poor spelling and grammar irritating but try to take a step back. Here's an all time favourite -" Yrnetn " - in a child's piece of writing.

Yrnetn
I can't work that out Grandmajean. 🤔

My favourite was The Smorning.

Germanshepherdsmum

I confess to starting sentences with ‘and’ and ‘but’ when writing nowadays, contrary to what I was taught - I also find myself splitting an infinitive and not caring. However, correct spelling is a must.

I do that.
And I really love a split infinitive

Turn the rules on their heads. 🙃

I think people are chatting on social media and may write as they speak.

I confess to starting sentences with ‘and’ and ‘but’ when writing nowadays, contrary to what I was taught - I also find myself splitting an infinitive and not caring. However, correct spelling is a must.

I don’t know if the subtitles on the BBC News are generated by a human or a machine, but I was spitting feathers last night when the word amend came across the screen as ammend! It was corrected eventually. The BBC isn’t what it was and don’t start me on Amol Rajan and his slovenly speech.

As Private James Fraser said ‘We’re doomed’.

I frequently have a quiet mutter to myself when I see some of the spelling on social media , but what really annoys me is the spelling errors in books ! Surely proofreading should find these.

I do find poor spelling and grammar irritating but try to take a step back. Here's an all time favourite -" Yrnetn " - in a child's piece of writing.

I have several (silently) every day when reading GN.

I've always been passionate about spelling and grammar and worked for many years in universities as an editor and proof reader. Now in my 80s, I am forced to accept that the old rules no longer hold sway. However, I cringe when I hear "different to" instead of "different from". I can still hear my teacher yelling "this differs FROM that; it cannot differ TO anything". Even the BBC and my favourite newspaper are guilty of such errors now. I suppose the question is whether it really matters. Probably not. Language changes all the time and the important thing is that we continue to communicate. Still, it won't stop me having a "grammar rant" from time to time.

Do children not have access to a dictionary?

The National Curriculum has
stifled creativity. Children so frightened of making spelling errors they don’t try with unfamiliar words.
Too much emphasis on Nouns, Pronouns etc etc to encourage flowing writing. Pupils become turned off the subject

The photo didn’t accompany the post.
This one

NotSpaghetti

This was one of my son's birthday cards recently:

My daughter gave me this card for my birthday this year.

It’s the greengrocer’s apostrophe that most irritates me and I embarrassed my children one evening when I went out with a kiddy paintbrush and a pot of white emulsion paint some 40 years ago to attend to a notice outside our house. The pavement had been dug up and a sign advised in red lettering that pedestrian’s should walk between the barrier’s in the road. After 24 hours I couldn’t restrain myself….

I still have my copy of First Aid to English, luckily I haven’t needed to open it for a very long time but I’d never get rid of it. The mistake that really riles me is birth instead of berth - locally we have several 2,3 or 4 ‘birth’ caravans for sale.

Please may I join Pedant's Corner? I scream at The Telegraph on a daily basis and often struggle to understand what the journalist is trying to impart - lack of punctuation and sentences the wrong way round. The other thing which drives me doollaly is "........... they were sat............". What ever happened to "sitting"? I can remember the dear departed Terry Wogan having a hissy fit about this.

Bring back "The First Aid to English". Anyone remember that? And "The Essentials of English Spelling" which formed the basis of weekly tests.

Callistemon21

The grocers' apostrophe!

For years, it has been rumoured that somebody has been going out late at night, correcting bad punctuation on Bristol shop fronts.

The self-proclaimed "grammar vigilante" goes out undercover in the dead of night correcting street signs and shop fronts where the apostrophes are in the wrong place

When I retired my ambition was to be the person who went round shops and markets and Tippexed all the wandering apostrophes.

However, that person is not me.

Reminds me of when some years ago I walked into a Texas Homecare to be confronted with a wall of different tiles. Each tile had a label on it showing 'These tiles are sold seperately', I got my pen out and each one I looked at I crossed out the e and put an a there. I couldn't choose with the wrongly spelled word glaring at me.

Germanshepherdsmum

You should see our local papers Barbadosbelle. The writing and grammar are shocking. I assume the ‘journalists’ left school with no qualifications and they can’t run to the luxury of a decent proof reader. Normal for Norfolk, as they say, perhaps.

Unfortunately, the vast majority of newspapers did away with sub-editors and proof readers years ago! I speak from personal experience.
The 'chester draws' one always makes me laugh though - it's surprising how often you see them for sale on sites like Facebook Marketplace.

I’m an ex-teacher and having spent my time correcting spelling and grammar, I can only conclude that no-one cares anymore. Texting has a lot to answer for. We have reverted to Shakespearean times when words were spelt in a variety of ways.

🤣🤣🤣

Maybe they need to pray 😀

Anyone else notice that the author of a piece about Labour and inheritance tax posted this morning didn’t know the difference between ‘prey on’ and ‘pray on’? Probably his teacher was one of those who didn’t correct mistakes.

Germanshepherdsmum

Are they not taught at school not to write ‘in dialect’ ?

They are at my daughter’s Primary School, but in her placements some schools insisted incorrect grammar shouldn’t be corrected either in writing or speech 😱😱