topic Re: English grammar in The Round Table

English grammar

blackburn_stevie — Wed, 23 Oct 2013 10:51:17 GMT

Can somebody tell me if there is a simple rule as to when you should use either to or too. I always struggled with those but I'm OK with two.

Cheers,

Steve

Re: English grammar

taylor-books — Wed, 23 Oct 2013 10:59:08 GMT

To is used to say you are going to somewhere or writing to someone, too is used to say too much, too heavy for example. What drives me mad is the use of your instead of you're, loose instead of lose and there instead of their.

Re: English grammar

blackburn_stevie — Wed, 23 Oct 2013 11:46:03 GMT

Cheers for that info. I should have paid more attention at school. I thought I had it down pat but sometimes, when I use either to or too in a sentence, it just doesn't look right when combined with the only rule that I remember from about 60 years ago which is that you use "too" if you could replace it with "as well" in your sentence.

As for there and their, I learned it by thinking that "over there" represented a place. "Place" ends with an "e" so you use there which also ends in an e.

As for "your instead of you're" you use "you're" if you could replace it with "You are", so that's easy enough and surely only dumbells would think of writing, "I loosed 5 quid on the horses yesterday."

Re: English grammar

xtf70 — Wed, 23 Oct 2013 11:49:33 GMT

Hmmm - only dumbells would put five quid on a horse in my opinion!

English grammar is a minefield and isn't helped by predictive text as seen so often here and on Twitter, etc., but all this reminds me of an old joke...

How do you placate a grammar pedant?

There, their, they're

Boom, boom!

Re: English grammar

blackburn_stevie — Wed, 23 Oct 2013 12:00:10 GMT

Hmmm - only dumbells would put five quid on a horse in my opinion!

Yeah, they usually run faster if there's a jockey sat on their back.

Re: English grammar

baybizz — Wed, 23 Oct 2013 14:38:49 GMT

To - Too - Two:

http://btr.michaelkwan.com/2009/08/31/grammar-101-to-too-and-two/

www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1084646/Apostrophe-catastrophe

www.parliament.uk/pa/cm200304/cmhansrd/vo031202/31202-35.htm

Re: English grammar

xtf70 — Wed, 23 Oct 2013 15:09:26 GMT

A wonderful example, recently erected by our County Council

I kid you not

Re: English grammar

cee-dee — Wed, 23 Oct 2013 15:22:38 GMT

I carnt berleev oled peepul carnt spel simpul werds proplee.

Re: English grammar

shanparfitt — Wed, 23 Oct 2013 16:12:48 GMT

I have an easy way to remember. "Too" is for when you want to say "as well" or as in "too much". You can remember it by thinking that the two 'o's are more than one 'o'! So it's one 'o' and then another one too! So it sort-of means "more than".

Hope that helps.

Shan

Re: English grammar

blackburn_stevie — Thu, 24 Oct 2013 09:36:52 GMT

Thanks very much. I've taken note of those replies and hope that some other folk have done the same.

The thing is, and I don't mean to be insulting here, do the people who make grammatical errors with things like to, two and too realise that they are making a mistake or do they just go blithely along their way? lol

Re: English grammar

ronnybabes — Thu, 24 Oct 2013 16:51:10 GMT

There are too many RT''ers trying to make sense of three different two's /too's/ to's.

My absolute erroneous grammatical pet hate is:

"would of" instead of "would have"

Re: English grammar

bankhaunter — Thu, 24 Oct 2013 17:49:00 GMT

@xtf70 wrote:
A wonderful example, recently erected by our County Council

I kid you not

It could be correct..

It would depend whether the writer was in effect saying long and short stay parking for shoppers or drawing the attention of shoppers to long and short stay parking.

Shopper's long and short stay.

Shoppers, long and short stay.

Re: English grammar

upthecreekyetagain — Thu, 24 Oct 2013 18:46:01 GMT

@bankhaunter wrote:
@xtf70 wrote:
A wonderful example, recently erected by our County Council

I kid you not
It could be correct..

It would depend whether the writer was in effect saying long and short stay parking for shoppers or drawing the attention of shoppers to long and short stay parking.

Shopper's long and short stay.

Shoppers, long and short stay.

Wouldn't that be shoppers' not shopper's or would the sign just be for a single shopper?

Re: English grammar

bankhaunter — Thu, 24 Oct 2013 19:29:22 GMT

Good question.

Is the sign to be read by a shopper as an individual or shoppers as a whole?

Regardless of the intention (if that had been thought about) the way the sign is laid out does look a bit odd.

Re: English grammar

taylor-books — Fri, 25 Oct 2013 20:18:07 GMT

People often say 'should of' instead of 'should have' as well.

I don't like it when someone says 'fed up of' I thought it was 'fed up with'.

Re: English grammar

captainbovine — Fri, 25 Oct 2013 20:48:17 GMT

drives me mad when people say "there is no cheese" aaarrrrggghhhh!!! it's "there isn't ANY cheese" it's even permeated onto the news now they do it, there is no, ....good grief!!!!

Re: English grammar

Anonymous — Thu, 31 Oct 2013 06:49:05 GMT

I am fed up with hearing "we are all in this together" it just makes no sence.

Re: English grammar

sellsoldstough — Thu, 07 Nov 2013 17:38:44 GMT

@Anonymous wrote:
I am fed up with hearing "we are all in this together" it just makes no sence.

Was that intentionally ironic?