The Turner Ink blog contains rants, bloopers, observations and opinions. It also has handy tips on grammar and punctuation such as colons: semicolons; and full stops. As well as some very useful ‘how tos’. Feel free to leave comments. Be nice though.

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Archive for the 'Word stuff' category

Turner Ink Christmas card bloopers – the answers

23rd
Dec
by Sarah Turner

Old Typewriter smallSo for those of you that received a Turner Ink Xmas card this year, these are the bloopers. How many did you get?

 

A Christmas tail [A classic homonym. It should be tale.]

Santa was having a bad day. 4 [up to number 10, spell out the number. So Four] of his elfs [elves] were throwing a sickie and the work experience elves werent [don't forget the apostrophe, weren't] producing toys fast enough. Santa was beginning to feel the pressure.

His blog needed updating. He hadn’t checked twitter [brand name, so Twitter] for at least 20 minites [minutes]. And people were giving him greif [grief] on Facebook.

Than [then], as he began to load his slay [another homonym, sleigh] one of the boards broke. And several large bags from Amazon fell to the ground: [a comma here not a colon] scattering their contents all over the place. Needless to say, santa [Cap S, Santa] was not in the best of moods.

Suddenly, the doorbell rang and he went to the door expecting another problem. But when he opened it; [comma here not a semicolon] there was just a little angle [like 18 degrees? Geddit? Yes, it should be angel of course] with a great big christmas [Christmas] tree.

The angel greeted him very cheerfully: [So lots of newspapers and mags have a colon to introduce speech. It's not needed though. A comma would suffice.]  “Merry Christmas Santa claus [cap C, Claus]. Isn’t it just a wonderful day [question mark needed]. I have a beautiful tree for you. See, isn’t its [it] just the loveliest Christmas Tree [lower case t, tree] you’ve ever seen? Where would you like me to put it?’ [You started with double speech marks, you need to end with double speech marks.]

And that’s how the angel on top of the Christmas tree tradition began.

Hands up who circled the And and But at the beginning of a sentence as an error? Back of the class!

Happy Christmas anyway.


Tags: capital letters, colons, commas, homonyms, semicolons
Posted in Bloopers, Word stuff | comments icon 1 Comment »

Fave joke of the year…

16th
Dec
by Sarah Turner

A teacher stood at the front of the class. “Remember, two negatives can make a positive but two positives can never make a negative.” From the back of the classroom came the rejoinder “Yeah, yeah.”


Posted in Word stuff | comments icon 1 Comment »

Lindsay Johns: Ghetto grammar robs the young of a proper voice

2nd
Sep
by Sarah Turner

I was writing about teen slang the other week. You may recall there was a quiz. Now, I love slang. And teenagers  in particular love slang.  But I have to admit there’s a time and a place. And what’s worrying is there seems to be a whole generation of kids who don’t know when to drop the innits. Because no-one’s told them they should.

One of the things I found shocking during the recent London riots – apart from the wanton vandalism – was the linguistic capabilities of many of the yoofs that were spoken to by the media. There was one kid they interviewed who finished every half garbled and unintelligible senetence with ‘ya get me?’. No mate. I don’t get you. Oh and by the way you don’t live in the Projects in Baltimore, so why talk like you do. He may have had a very valid point about social injustice, poor education and the lack of affordable housing in the Capital but I couldn’t understand a word he was saying. How will he get on in an interview I wonder?

A couple of weeks  ago I read a brilliant article by  Lindsay Johns in the Evening Standard about this very same subject. It’s a good read. Here’s the link. Ghetto grammar robs the young of a proper voice.

 


Tags: evening standard, lindsay johns
Posted in Grammar tips, Word stuff | comments icon 5 Comments »

15th
Aug
by Sarah Turner

It’s been a week since we saw the worst of the rioting in my home town of London. These are just some of the signs that have appeared.

Got any more? Send them over and I’ll get them on the blog.

 

Jamie Oliver's Clapham Junction

 

Finsbury Park courtesy of http://yfrog.com/gy386oej

 

Peckham courtesy of http://twitpic.com/63gnw5

 

 


Tags: london, riots, signs
Posted in Word stuff | comments icon No comments yet »

So, like, how did you do with the teen slang?

15th
Jul
by Sarah Turner

Ok, so here are the answers from yesterday’s post. Was you tidy or was you confuzzled?

1.How might you embarrass a friend?

Dekecking – pulling down your mates’s trousers. What a jape!
Baring
Gopping

2. If a girl was to describe an attractive boy, what might she say?

Mcfittie – Obvs.
Grimmer
Bosh

3. If something was amusing it could be described as:

Chenzed
Savage
Hollage – hilarious!

4. If a young person has too much too drink what would they be?

Chenzed – tired or drunk
Confuzzled
Bagged

5. “You turn into a right…….when you’re drunk”

Bosh
Grimmer
Meg – It means ‘most embarrassing girl/guy’. Who knew?

And how about these?

Redonkulous – ridiculous
Sketchy – flaky
Bless – cute, sweet, same as awww
Old School – back in the day. As in “I love old school hip-hop like Grandmaster Flash”. Oh by the way, people who say ‘old school’ are too young to remember it
My bad – or My B. My mistake. Or Mea Culpa if you’re that way inclined
Man up – Be brave, toughen up. (Most used from the stands at Emirates Stadium in the direction of over-dramatic European players)
Killa – the best, number one. As in “killa tunes”
Netglow – what you suffer from when you buy something that looks really good online but is rubbish when it arrives
Facebook minute – an elongated and obscure period of time spent distracted on Facebook when you only wanted to quickly check your messages
Text purgatory – waiting for someone to text back. “Why hasn’t he texted me yet? Why? Why?”

So how did you do? Were you porn (good) or were you a wasteman (fool). You get me?


Tags: teen slang
Posted in Word stuff | comments icon 2 Comments »

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