Grammar that makes you cringe

[Pickled Onion]

And more-moreover they should have said "Today's maximum  temperature will be 22 degrees Celcius." as the use of centigrade is deprecated.

"22 Celsius" surely? "Degrees" is redundant.

d.

Apparently not.

[mattc]

However, it really irritates me when words like "warm" and "cold" are used to describe temperatures. The weather is warm or cold. The temperature is how we measure that heat or lack of it, and appropriate adjectives are "high" and "low".

Heat is a form of energy, so it is not quantified by temperature. And neither are related to grammar.

You can be as pedantic as you like about this, it doesn't matter. Weather forecasts are about communication; a clear unambiguous message is all we need.

[Wowbagger]

However, it really irritates me when words like "warm" and "cold" are used to describe temperatures. The weather is warm or cold. The temperature is how we measure that heat or lack of it, and appropriate adjectives are "high" and "low".

Heat is a form of energy, so it is not quantified by temperature. And neither are related to grammar.

You can be as pedantic as you like about this, it doesn't matter. Weather forecasts are about communication; a clear unambiguous message is all we need.

And that's another one!

[Cudzoziemiec]

And more-moreover they should have said "Today's maximum  temperature will be 22 degrees Celcius." as the use of centigrade is deprecated.

"22 Celsius" surely? "Degrees" is redundant.

d.

Apparently not.

The "degree Celsius" has been the only SI unit whose full unit name contains an uppercase letter since the SI base unit for temperature, the kelvin, became the proper name in 1967 replacing the term degree Kelvin. The plural form is degrees Celsius.[17]

The general rule of the International Bureau of Weights and Measures (BIPM) is that the numerical value always precedes the unit, and a space is always used to separate the unit from the number, e.g., "23 °C" (not "23°C" or "23° C"). Thus the value of the quantity is the product of the number and the unit, the space being regarded as a multiplication sign (just as a space between units implies multiplication). The only exceptions to this rule are for the unit symbols for degree, minute, and second for plane angle (°, ′, and ″, respectively), for which no space is left between the numerical value and the unit symbol.[18] Other languages, and various publishing houses, may follow different typographical rules.

Well, I didn't know any of that! No such thing as a degree Kelvin. Perhaps in time we will come to speak of "23 celsius" rather than "23 degrees Celsius".

[citoyen]

I didn't know any of that either. Fair enough, °C it is!

Funny though - every publication I've ever worked on has had the house style rule not to use the degrees symbol. However, this is probably more to do with typesetting conventions than semantics - I guess it's for the same reason that you never use the % symbol either, always spell out "per cent", the reasons for which are no longer relevant but still widely observed.

I still think "degrees" is semantically redundant - Celsius is the name of the scale; a degree is just a unit of division of a scale. We don't talk of length, for example, in terms of "degrees metre".

d.

[mattc]

I still think "degrees" is semantically redundant - Celsius is the name of the scale; a degree is just a unit of division of a scale. We don't talk of length, for example, in terms of "degrees metre".

The degree is the unit, in the same way a metre (or a centimetre) is.

The reason we don't name the scale when stating lengths is the lack of ambiguity.
2 Inches or
3 metres
are both entirely unambiguous.

It would also be normal to say "45 degrees" when describing an angle. The degree is the unit of measurement.

(I think it's that simple, but may have missed something!)

[citoyen]

There's nothing ambiguous about "22 Celsius" either...

I'm not going to argue the toss on this one though - I'm not trying to claim "22 degrees Celsius" is wrong.

d.

[Bledlow]

I also hate the increasingly popular "top" temperature. What's wrong with "maximum"?

It's a (relatively) modernism introduced by fussy Latin-lovers who were too snobbish to use the same words as poor people. What's wrong with 'highest' or 'greatest'? 

[Cudzoziemiec]

From http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/jul/13/drug-tunnels-us-mexico-border

The latest Arizona tunnel was discovered after state police pulled over a man who had 39 pounds of methamphetamine in his vehicle and mentioned the strip mall.

Who mentioned the strip mall? The police or the man they'd stopped?

[red marley]

I still think "degrees" is semantically redundant - Celsius is the name of the scale; a degree is just a unit of division of a scale. We don't talk of length, for example, in terms of "degrees metre".

There is semantic value in the degrees symbol. It indicates that Celsius is measured on the interval scale - that is, it has an arbitrary zero. For this reason you can calculate intervals between a pair of values, but not their ratio (20 degrees Celsius is not twice the temperature of 10 degrees Celsius, but it is 10 degrees warmer). In contrast, kelvin is measured on an absolute ratio scale where 0 indicates absence of quantity being measured (so 200K is correctly twice the temperature of 100K). Likewise it would make no sense to use the term "degrees metre" since length is also measured on the ratio scale.

For similar reasons, direction measured in degrees is also measured on the interval scale (the direction associated with 0 degrees is arbitrary). I suppose to be semantically consistent, an angle between two vectors should not be expressed in degrees, but units on the degrees scale (see Temperatures and intervals in that Wiki article for the temperature equivalent).

[Andrij]

The peloton are ...

Is peloton an automatically plural word as scissors and trousers are or should that read: The peloton is ...?

I assume the original source is British, as Brits can't grasp the concept that collective nouns are singular.

[Ian H]

The peloton are ...

Is peloton an automatically plural word as scissors and trousers are or should that read: The peloton is ...?

I assume the original source is British, as Brits can't grasp the concept that collective nouns are singular.

The UK trend towards treating collective nouns as plural is recent.

[Andrij]

The peloton are ...

Is peloton an automatically plural word as scissors and trousers are or should that read: The peloton is ...?

I assume the original source is British, as Brits can't grasp the concept that collective nouns are singular.

The UK trend towards treating collective nouns as plural is recent.

Good, there's still a chance to put an end to it.

[Bledlow]

If we try very, very, hard.

[Cudzoziemiec]

It indicates a philosophical difference between Brits and Yanks. The British, despite a tradition of team games followed by communal baths, view a collective noun as representing a group of individuals. The Americans, despite a tradition of rugged individualism, view it as one unit. Why the difference and why its recent appearance? Well, the Americans fought a war to keep their country one; while the recent trend towards collective plurality in the UK indicates that, even in grammar, yes... we can blame Thatcher! 



Just remember these are special YACF grammar rules which may not apply in real life. 

[Biggsy]

What's wrong with "maximum"?

It has three silly bubbles.

[why1040]

I still think "degrees" is semantically redundant - Celsius is the name of the scale; a degree is just a unit of division of a scale. We don't talk of length, for example, in terms of "degrees metre".

The degree is the unit, in the same way a metre (or a centimetre) is.

The reason we don't name the scale when stating lengths is the lack of ambiguity.
2 Inches or
3 metres
are both entirely unambiguous.

It would also be normal to say "45 degrees" when describing an angle. The degree is the unit of measurement.

(I think it's that simple, but may have missed something!)

I think you're right, that's why we say metric tonne, to differentiate from imperial ones.

We don't have to say metric metre, because there is only one, but there are lots of degrees.

Completely off-topic, I was taught that Celsius originally started the other way round...100 was the freezing point and 0 boiling.

[Bledlow]

Well, the Americans fought a war to keep their country one;

Some of them. A large minority fought to make it two.

[Cudzoziemiec]

I'm sure a study of regional dialect in the USA would find the southern states use a plural verb with collective nouns.

Maybe. But it's all Lincoln's fault.

[Auntie Helen]

From a BBC News report about the shooting in the Batman cinema

Police revised down the death toll from 14 earlier. They said about 50 people had been shot, including the deceased.

I'm not 100% sure what they mean here - did they swap 'deceased' for 'perpetrator'? Or are they saying there were 50 shootings in total, of which 14 died?

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-18921492

[hubner]

Something which is annoying is titles where every word starts with capital when they shouldn't, eg "Journey To The End Of The Night" should be "Journey to the End of the Night".

It's very common with the downloaded titles you get when ripping a CD and you have to manually correct them.

[hellymedic]

Something which is annoying is titles where every word starts with capital when they shouldn't, eg "Journey To The End Of The Night" should be "Journey to the End of the Night".

It's very common with the downloaded titles you get when ripping a CD and you have to manually correct them.

I think Micro$oft 'Title Case' capitalises every word so blame the computers!

[rogerzilla]

http://static.happyplace.com/assets/images/2012/07/500ebb21b7092.jpeg

[madcow]

Untitled by madcow99, on Flickr

[eck]

BBC, 'medal' is not a verb.