People who don't understand the difference between 'til and till.For many years, I have been one to pride myself in knowing the difference between 'til and till. However small this error may be, it is REALLY frustrating!!! What's more frustrating is that it has become so common that it is now starting to be accepted in professional scenarios. When you think about how abundantly silly this is, an educated person comes to realise that you may as well confuse the words 'with' and 'toilet'...I mean, they are EQUIDISTANTLY as different as 'til and till!
For those of you who do not know the difference, the word till is a noun or a verb, depending on the context. As a noun, it is what we all refer to as a cash register. As a verb, it is used in farming and irrigation jargon. The word 'til is a preposition and a conjunction used interchangeably with the word 'until'...it means the same thing.
Now that we've all read this, I'm sure that you've all reached for your dictionaries, as you were sure that 'till' meant 'until'. If you have dispute with my claim, you can give my Aunty Joan a call and argue with her (she's an English teacher, so I doubt you'll get very far), but anyone who simply looks at the rule of English grammar will realise that, in order to shorten a word, one MUST place an apostrophe to make up for missing letters...and obviously, one would never add letters to a shortened word.
Thank you for tuning in to the very first instalment of 'What everyone is thinking, but will not say...' This has been Master Sinclair coming to you from his bedroom in Edinburgh (haha that sounded creepy...).
haha that did sound creepy. English errors drive me loco! Speaking of which...realize...not realise. Yes, I'm annoying!!!
ReplyDeleteHahaha English errors drive ME loco too! However, I hope you haven't been marking your students wrong for spelling it 'realise', because they are correct...and you are incorrect haha, sorry. Because Canada is a member of the Commonwealth of the United Kingdom, we use British spelling, meaning 'realize' is incorrect because it is the United States version of the original English word 'realise'. Your computer probably tells you that you've spelt it wrong, but actually, I would bet my ridiculously over-priced pair of Burberry gloves that you have your dictionary setting set to 'English - United States' when it would be WAY more appropriate for you to set it to 'English - United Kingdom...I hope I didn't sound rude...in fact, I fought a social teacher in grade 12 because he marked my final essay wrong. Let's just say the English teacher ended calling the social teacher a wanker hahahaha!
ReplyDeleteJust a little fun fact brought to you from my bedroom in Edinburgh ;)
Just to clarify, when I said you were incorrect, I meant for marking them wrong...not for spelling it that way. We accept both spellings in Canada, however, realise is just the original and proper spelling.
ReplyDeleteHeyo! Me again...hey I was thinking, If you are an English lover, I bought this book at a garage sale in Saskatchewan last summer, It's amazing! It's called 'The Science of English' by Charles Ashley (not to be confused with the book of the same title by Sidney Lanier...haha I have that one too haha I'm SUCH a nerd!). You should try and find it online, it's pretty old, but it has a whole bunch of stuff on the passing of Greek to English and a whole bunch of grammatical rules and guidelines from pre-Shakespeare. If you can't find it and you wanna see it, let me know, I'll bring it home when I come for a visit!
ReplyDeletePS. Sorry if you have your email linked to these comments...hahaha!
A few things:
ReplyDelete1. This "Pet Peeves" list is going to be a short one... Is it?
2. "With" and "Toilet" are not EQUIDISTANTLY different than "'til" and "till" as "'til and "till" are homophones (or heterographs -same dif.) and "with" and "toilet" are not. It'd be more effective in your writing to compare "'til" and "till" with "their" and "there" and "they're". ...Or "two" and "to" and "too". (As that's my biggest pet peeve. Blech.)
3. If you like to read books on the English language there's one called, "Eats, Shoots and Leaves" that's about punctuation and is absolutely hilarious. Also "A Million Words and Counting" is really good. It's about how we adopt new words in our language all the time (like bootylicious and google) and how it's going to the pot. It was fun to read.
4. What are you doing in Scotland writing about boring english stuff??? Why aren't you traveling EVERYWHERE and being a tourist and taking tons of pictures to share with us??
5. You're hilarious. Love!
Haha 1. No, definitely not a short list.
ReplyDelete2. My point was that it doesn't matter what they sound like, you should know the difference BEFORE writing them! In my opinion, people shouldn't be allowed to use conjunctions until they know how they work...even more, they shouldn't be allowed to make short-cuts without understanding how said short-cut came to be. The other reason I did not use your suggestions (because believe me, I thought of using them) is because those errors are opening up a WHOLE new can of worms and will be the target of another post!
3. I shall look those up! Do you think they're on Amazon?!
4. No money.
5. Thanks!
PS. I genuinely apologise for any typos, my phone won't let me proof-read!