Why can't you write/speak proper?

Channel 7’s latest promo for My Kitchen Rules is giving me the shits. Here I am trying to alert the world to this awful misuse and abuse of the language, and they push out one of the worst examples of bad english I’ve heard publicly for a long time. And yet again, it’s the confusion over plurals that is their problem.

Here’s what their promo says:

“The father and son that Australia have taken to their hearts.”

FAAAARRRRRKKKKK!!!!

“Australia” is a country. A single country. One. It is NOT a population. If they want to refer to Australia, then they MUST use it as a singular. That means saying …

“The father and son that Australia has taken to its heart.”

That makes sense. That is correct grammar. Alternatively, if they want to refer to a population (a plural), then what about …

“The father and son that Australians have taken to their hearts.”

That also makes sense. That is also correct grammar.

Maybe it’s time that Channel 7 asked me to be their answer to the ABC’s SCOSE (Standing Committee on Spoken English). Of course, ABC’s SCOSE seems to get it wrong so many times too, so maybe the ABC needs to hire me too.

(PS – I’m open to either offer. Or both.)

You may remember my post from a little while ago about our poor old Australian Broadcasting Corporation suddenly being unable to work out the difference between plural and singular nouns. Well, their latest SCOSE report includes a section that seems to suggest they’re still struggling to understand it …

‘A group of young Aboriginal leaders from Central Australia is calling for an apology after it was asked to leave a backpackers resort in Alice Springs at the weekend.’  

Treating the Aboriginal leaders as a single entity is faintly ridiculous. Anyway, the head of the subject phrase is ‘leaders’, not ‘group’. So it’s better to say:

A group of young Aboriginal leaders from Central Australia are calling for an apology after they were asked to leave…

Again, Aunty appears to be saying that the subject in the first version is the ‘leaders’ and therefore it should be treated as a plural. But the word ‘group’ modifies it, making it singular. Though, in this case you could have used the plural in the second half of the sentence if you’d wanted to:”A group of young Aboriginal leaders from Central Australia is calling for an apology after they were asked to leave a backpackers resort in Alice Springs at the weekend.” No, that’s not clumsy, it’s quite legal.

UPDATE:

I am getting sick and tired of hearing this misuse of singular and plurals. This one tonight on Channel 7 …

“The Chinese government are funding …”

ARGH!!! Freakin’ idiots!!!! The word “government” is singular. You should be saying …

“The Chinese government IS funding …”

For god’s sake you morons, it’s not difficult!!

This is one that has irked me for years, and it seems no one is learning the error of their ways as yet. Here’s a typical sample from a description of a computer game package:

“VICTORIA COMPLETE comprises of the full VICTORIA and VICTORIA REVOLUTIONS …”

Freakin’ idiots. “Comprising” is one of those handful of words that has a different composition for each of its various forms. These are:

A comprises B and C

A is comprised of B and C

Confusing the two forms seems rampant these days. Fortunately there is a simple rule to help you poor fools remember how it works: “Rises alone”. That means “comprises” (rises) is used on its own, without any modifiers. Therefore, conversely, only “comprised” is accompanied by “is” and “of” (or in my first example, just “of”).

So now you know the rule. No more excuses.

Spam is the curse of every email system. It takes up a lot of bandwidth, requires sophisticated filtering to keep it from cluttering up your inbox, and every now and then actually fools someone into throwing enough money at them to keep the spammers interested.

Nevertheless, their ludicrously inane and unlikely emails are often filled with such gems of bad grammar and misuse of english that you have to smile. Take these for example, just arrived with my morning mail:

“This is a procedure that automatically occur when an invalid information is submitted during the log in process.”

 “NOW AS A MATTER OF THE URGENCY YOU ARE ADVICE TO CONTACT THE
DIRECTOR”

“EIGHT HUNDRED AND FIFTY THOUSAND DOLLARS WITH THE (BOA),
WHICH WAS PREVIOUSLY ON-HOLD IN THE TUNE THAT YOU ARE DEAD …”

 Actually, those last two are from a spam email that I just HAD to open when I saw the subject line:

“ATTENTION BENEFICIARY. (ARE YOU TRULY DEAD?)”

Gotta luv ’em! Yes, I’m dead, but please keep sending me email!! Curiously, that same one, which claimed to be from the Bank of Afrique went on to say that someone claiming my money had been arrested and handed over to the FBI. Wow – the FBI’s jurisdiction has been expanded into Africa? Remarkable!

Do people really fall for this shit? Surely anyone with two brain cells to rub together can see through it?

I don’t know if it’s just me, but I get the worst spam on this blog. I wouldn’t mind so much if they actually wrote something I could understand, but mostly it’s just like a string of random words. Someone seriously needs to get a new translator app. Check out some of the crap from just this week:

• “I was looking at few of your blog notifys on this internet scene moreover I visualize this texture scene is rattling instructive!” [WTF???]
• “Your home is valueble for me. Thanks!” [What does my home have to do with this blog? And the word is spelled ‘valuable’.]
• “Your favorite justification seemed to be on the net the easiest thing to be aware of. “ [Huh?]
• “this post shows the information which is close to standard. convincing way of expression due to that reason your post become so informative.”[Say what?]
• “many thanks for your ideas on this, I felt somewhat strike by this text. Merit again! You make a good moment. Portrays natures best by the great report here. I feel if more people thought of it like this, they’d have got a better time period have the suspend ofing the issue. [and again – WTF?]

Come on spammers. If you’re going to spam a weblog dedicated to the correct use of the english language, couldn’t you at least write something that makes sense? If not, just F**K OFF.

This blog gets a hell of a lot of spam comments. I spend hours scanning and deleting that crap.

But here is something really, REALLY annoying. This is a blog about correct and proper use of the english language – spelling, grammar, syntax, etc. Yet the spammers are some of the worst writers I’ve encountered – so they’re certainly not endearing themselves to me with their poor writing. I mean, I doubt I’d let any of them actually get published, but if they can’t even write properly they stand absolutely no chance.

Check out this prize contribution (no doubt courtesy of some extremely bad translating software):

We’re continually testing variations of our search results after to optimize engagement in regard to both you and our users. Similarly, you’re quite always fatiguing to find ways to exaggerate each contract for of your ad to get your implication across to users. To remedy, we’ll soon be making a metamorphosis to certain ads that will suffer you to vaunt more facts where it’s most qualified to be noticed–in the headline.

Starting today and over and above the next not many days, we’re changing the placement of the maiden thumbnail sketch parade for sure ads that appear mainly the search results on Google. In favour of some ads where each procession appears to be a well-defined decision and ends in the dignified punctuation, description tailback 1 resolution be moved to the headline and separated through a hyphen. As a consequence, some acme array ads hand down procure longer headlines. Here’s an example:

We’ve found that the modulate results in higher clickthrough rates after ads that are shown with the longer headline, as well as other excellent ads that show up wits them. It also creates a more advisedly judgement as a replacement for users by highlighting more data in the ad.

While not some ads whim be shown with the longer headline, you can further your chances past ensuring that each line of your ad appears to be a distinct determination and ends in the seemly punctuation (e.g., a aeon or a topic assess).

Since this is a worldwide change, punctuation will reshape alongside country.

WTF?!?!?!?!?

Apart from making absolutely no sense, it has quite a few oddities. Like a mix of American and English spelling (optimize and favourite).

Honestly, you spamming pricks. I’m sick of getting your spam posted as potential comments on my blog. But I’m even more annoyed when you post utter, senseless, unintelligible CRAP like this.

Go away and leave me (and my blog) alone!!!