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Pedant's paradise

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Re: Pedant's paradise

Postby Andyp » 30 Nov 2021, 11:34

Dr.Al wrote:Echo... echo... echo...



Sorry about that. I was getting all sorts of SQLs while posting, seems to be sorted now. Duplicates have been deposted ;)
I do not think therefore I do not am.

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Re: Pedant's paradise

Postby Phil Pascoe » 30 Nov 2021, 11:40

Andyp wrote:That is so true. When I see the way that my girls (they were 6 and 3 when we arrived in France) have been taught french.


Young children learn so easily. I remember reading a letter from a woman (after someone had told her different languages were confusing) saying her three year old spoke fluent English to her, fluent Danish to her father and fluent Welsh to all her friends.
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Re: Pedant's paradise

Postby Malc2098 » 30 Nov 2021, 11:45

Woodbloke wrote:
I digress; not only were we taught proper English grammar 'ad nauseam' but I can vividly remember being teached :D how to write properly, which was Victorian Copperplate! I suppose I must have been one of last little oicks who was taught how write like that...I wish I still could - Rob



1950s infants school - taught to write printing like lower case Arial.

1950s junior school - taught italic with dippy ink pen. (Always wanted to be ink monitor but never reached such dizzy heights!)

!960s county grammar school - had to forget all previous styles of writing and taught, no expected, to write in copperplate/roundhand. Forced to use copy books to to do so; the sort that had a line printed in roundhand and you had to copy it ten times below.

I eventually got not bad at it. Then spent 30 years handwriting statements and reports, so it dropped off a bit.
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Re: Pedant's paradise

Postby RogerS » 30 Nov 2021, 11:59

Phil Pascoe wrote:
Andyp wrote:That is so true. When I see the way that my girls (they were 6 and 3 when we arrived in France) have been taught french.


Young children learn so easily. I remember reading a letter from a woman (after someone had told her different languages were confusing) saying her three year old spoke fluent English to her, fluent Danish to her father and fluent Welsh to all her friends.


I certainly admire those fluent in many languages. I remember visiting a German friend in Paris for dinner. She was doing translation work (as were the other guests) for HP. They were doing translation into other languages. A sentence could easily start in French, segue into German then to Italian before they remembered this muppet and reverted to English. :oops:
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Re: Pedant's paradise

Postby Phil Pascoe » 30 Nov 2021, 12:25

Malc2098 wrote:Forced to use copy books to to do so; the sort that had a line printed in roundhand and you had to copy it ten times below.


We had special lines books that we had to use if given lines. We had to buy them. They had a wide line, a narrow line, a wide line, a narrow line and so on. Every letter had to touch the top and bottom of the narrow line with every "tail" touching the line above or below it. Every letter not touching got you another ten lines.
(A favourite punishment was a four hundred word essay about the inside of a ping pong ball.)
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Re: Pedant's paradise

Postby Malc2098 » 30 Nov 2021, 12:52

Phil Pascoe wrote:
Malc2098 wrote:Forced to use copy books to to do so; the sort that had a line printed in roundhand and you had to copy it ten times below.


We had special lines books that we had to use if given lines. We had to buy them. They had a wide line, a narrow line, a wide line, a narrow line and so on. Every letter had to touch the top and bottom of the narrow line with every "tail" touching the line above or below it. Every letter not touching got you another ten lines.
(A favourite punishment was a four hundred word essay about the inside of a ping pong ball.)



Sounds like you went to my school, too! :D
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Re: Pedant's paradise

Postby Andyp » 30 Nov 2021, 13:15

Oh the ping pong ball essay.
Can't remember now how many words but I do remember waxing lyrical about how the inside of said sporting sphere could be compared with the inside of the brains of the prefects who set the detention.
I do not think therefore I do not am.

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Re: Pedant's paradise

Postby spb » 30 Nov 2021, 13:32

My school's practice was to set sides rather than lines - your essay just had to cover however many sides of standard ruled A4 paper. Some, but not all, would specify 'no diagrams'.

Legend had it that 'four sides on the inside of a ping pong ball' stopped happening when an enterprising student took two ping pong balls, cut them in half, and wrote on the inside - a rather shorter essay than intended, but did fit the letter of the specification.
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Re: Pedant's paradise

Postby Just4fun » 30 Nov 2021, 13:59

Phil Pascoe wrote:Young children learn so easily. I remember reading a letter from a woman (after someone had told her different languages were confusing) saying her three year old spoke fluent English to her, fluent Danish to her father and fluent Welsh to all her friends.

A Finnish couple explained to us that they moved from Luxemburg to London when they realised their children were totally bilingual - in Finnish and Luxembourgish! I suspect you would struggle to find a less useful combination of languages.
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Re: Pedant's paradise

Postby Lurker » 30 Nov 2021, 14:55

I remember my English teacher setting me a similar pointless essay, I argued with him that I didn’t want to waste my time..
We brokered a deal where I read far from the madding crowd and on Saturday morning I went to his house to clean his car! He sat on the wall in the sun whilst I worked and gave him a detailed appraisal of the said book.
Two years later, I took “O level” English literature, I read the questions (you can guess what) and looked up to see him giving me a big smile.
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Re: Pedant's paradise

Postby PAC1 » 30 Nov 2021, 15:21

For me School was a waste (Secondary Modern with the emphasis on secondary meaning you failed). I started my education after completing my apprenticeship. I had to get English O level to move on and decided it was safest to sit two different boards. I passed one because the essay question was:
A day in the life of:
(a) a Joiner
(b) a Secretary
I have to say that was one of several lucky breaks along the way
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Re: Pedant's paradise

Postby AJB Temple » 30 Nov 2021, 15:44

You guys have had some odd experiences. Never heard of the ping pong ball thing and never had lines or pointless essays. However, I went to a school that was basically an Oxbridge exam factory and they were obsessive. Didn't learn anything much of any use except how to pass academic exams very efficiently. I really enjoyed English Literature though and that teacher was great, with a fondness for the classics as well as modern literature. Unfortunately I didn't study it at A level as the family consensus, with which I disagreed, was that it was of no use in later life.

PS: the family "consensus" was a myth. What my father said was law, even when demonstrably opinionated and largely ignorant nonsense. Hence I left home at 17 to go to university and never went back.
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Re: Pedant's paradise

Postby Phil Pascoe » 30 Nov 2021, 22:06

In years one and two we got squares - pick four figures and work out the square. Swap the numbers around and repeat, so you might do 1234 for the first, 2341 for the second. This was long before calculators, so we had no way of checking the answers. Three of them in the first year, five of them in the second. In the third year it changed to cubes and in the fourth to five figure cubes. In the fifth it went up to eight five figure cubes. Get one wrong and get another eight. Better than detentions, I suppose - three hours looking at an eye level cross on the wall outside the senior prefects' room - if we were seen to move once we got another three hours on another day.
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Re: Pedant's paradise

Postby Alf » 01 Dec 2021, 11:49

It's possible that some or all of these wondrous ideas for punishment existed at my schools various, but I was a goody-two-shoes and didn't find out. It was only at boarding school* that I was finally introduced to one, on the "the whole dorm must be guilty" theory. One was shaken from sleep at an ungodly hour, presented with pencil and paper, and instructed to start at the letter A in the dictionary and write out the definitions of any word of six letters or more until it was time for breakfast. An effective combination of sleep deprivation, concentration, and tedium.

*If you're imagining somewhere posh, let me stop you right there. More Lowood than Roedean. ;)
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Re: Pedant's paradise

Postby Woodbloke » 01 Dec 2021, 12:00

Alf wrote:. It was only at boarding school...

Thee and me Alf; another sufferer. My experiences were not those I recollect with fond memories - Rob
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Re: Pedant's paradise

Postby Dr.Al » 01 Dec 2021, 13:20

Alf wrote:One was shaken from sleep at an ungodly hour, presented with pencil and paper, and instructed to start at the letter A in the dictionary and write out the definitions of any word of six letters or more until it was time for breakfast. An effective combination of sleep deprivation, concentration, and tedium.


Given it was time limited rather than based on a number of words, it sounds like a method of getting children to write v e r y

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Re: Pedant's paradise

Postby Alf » 02 Dec 2021, 09:06

Alas, our housemistress was not a s l o w thinker and would have seen through that in 0.0001 seconds. Likely a return match the next morning would have ensued.

It's funny, Rob, I actually quite enjoyed the first coupla of years. It was only when the school started to making poor decisions based on trying to solve its financial problems that it went downhill. A succession of mergers with other small and failing schools eventually saw its demise, I believe.
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Re: Pedant's paradise

Postby Tiresias » 02 Dec 2021, 11:11

Alf wrote:It's funny, Rob, I actually quite enjoyed the first coupla of years. It was only when the school started to making poor decisions based on trying to solve its financial problems that it went downhill. A succession of mergers with other small and failing schools eventually saw its demise, I believe.


This thread seems to have drifted a bit. However…

I may be unusual, but I thoroughly enjoyed my time at boarding school. I went back there a few years back (I happened to be passing through the area), and was shown round by my old French master. He was very feeble. In his day he was one of the most disciplinarian teachers there. Eheu fugaces &c. He claimed to remember me but I doubt it.

But: does anyone else remember the absolute hoot it was to travel on an aircraft as an unaccompanied minor? Perhaps you can’t even do it these days. My brother and I did Egypt and Cyprus to UK regularly.

Enormous fun.
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Re: Pedant's paradise

Postby Woodbloke » 02 Dec 2021, 11:31

Alf wrote:It's funny, Rob, I actually quite enjoyed the first coupla of years. It was only when the school started to making poor decisions based on trying to solve its financial problems that it went downhill. A succession of mergers with other small and failing schools eventually saw its demise, I believe.

Mine was great in the summer but a bitterly cold Edwardian boarding house was no fun in winter, the bullying didn't help either:

ECGS Form3 1964.jpg
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Form 3 photo, Sept 1964, taken on the head's croquet lawn. Your's truly third from the lhs, front row. This pic and others was sent to me recently by my mate Malcolm, who's the very tall bloke standing, rear row, lhs at the end. The boarding house is behind us sprogs and the school was Earles Colne Grammar, near Colchester, which is very close to a certain Mike G's abode. It was the second oldest grammar in the country, being founded in 1520 and closed it's doors in 1974; there were only ever around 130 pupils max so it's not difficult to see why.
They lad in the rear row with the 'pudding basin' hair job just behind our form master (rhs) was Phill Knott, who was insanely bright; a while ago I came across a critique of Hawking's 'A Brief History of Time' so I guess it was by him - Rob
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Re: Pedant's paradise

Postby Phil Pascoe » 02 Dec 2021, 12:56

In my one whole school photo I stood directly behind the headmaster - they knew if they allowed me to be anywhere near an end I would be the one person who ran to the other end to be in the photo twice. :lol:
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Re: Pedant's paradise

Postby RogerS » 02 Dec 2021, 13:06

I had a guess, Rob, at which one was you before reading the text and guess what....gotcha !

This was my C Engineering course at the BBC. Can anyone guess which one is me ?

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Re: Pedant's paradise

Postby Andyp » 02 Dec 2021, 13:35

Defo one with a glass in hand.
I do not think therefore I do not am.

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Re: Pedant's paradise

Postby Vann » 03 Dec 2021, 01:07

One of my favourite dislikes is the use of 12am or 12pm. Is 12am the minute after 11:59am or the minute before 12:01am? There's no such time as far as I'm concerned. It's 12 noon or 12 midnight - or you can do what my employer does (using the 24 hour clock) 23:59 or 00:01 for midnight.

My employer won't use 2400 and 0000 - although I have less of a problem with that. 24:00 Friday and 00:00 Saturday would be the same moment.

And I sometimes have to battle with my OCD when quoting others on forums - correcting their, there, and they're - or to, too and two

Cheers, Vann.
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Re: Pedant's paradise

Postby Just4fun » 03 Dec 2021, 10:57

Vann wrote:One of my favourite dislikes is the use of 12am or 12pm. Is 12am the minute after 11:59am or the minute before 12:01am? There's no such time as far as I'm concerned. It's 12 noon or 12 midnight - or you can do what my employer does (using the 24 hour clock) 23:59 or 00:01 for midnight.

The international standard (ISO 8601) is to use the 24 hour clock, which avoids this confusion. Or it would if everyone used the standard.
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Re: Pedant's paradise

Postby droogs » 03 Dec 2021, 12:50

There is no 24 hour clock, 24:00hrs does not exist, you do not get 24:00:01. A day is 23 hours 59 minutes long. the clock starts at Zero hour and ends at 23:59 hrs. If all the modern tech with internal clocks worked on 24 hours then everything would happen an hour later every day and you would eventually be getting up for breakfast at midnight lol
besides it's stupid to start the day in the middle of the night the clock should be set around sunrise on the summer solstice at stonehenge or the sphinx, you know one of the places the little grey men built 'specially for that purpose 12k years ago

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