Urgent Plea!

Well, that's very true but still you could at least try and humour me.

Grammatical pedants should be rounded up and shot. Or any other method of execution that's convenient.

Whilst I consider grammar and spelling to be very important, when I text message I use the relevant abbreviations to speed things up and so I can fit more in. I see no reason why such abbreviations (such as 'ur' for you are or your, 'u' for you etc) can't be used on what is an informal and friendly forum.

I would agree with your call for correct spelling and grammar as deviation from this does, on occasion, cause confusion. I also sometimes get the feeling that some of our more distruptive members use these 'mistakes' just to get everyone else's backs up.

Txt msg speak is - in my opinion - no less acceptable that using can't or don't in place of cannot and do not. This is due to the fact that text speak has, unlike poor spelling, conventions which are generally accepted and understood.

You clearly didn't read the chapter on the apostrophe properly, otherwise you'd know that you should have written 'There's a brilliant book' and 'that's it'.

In fact there, their and they're is one of the most common and annoying mistakes made on this forum. Is not that difficult is it?

There - a place or position, as in 'over there'
Their - belonging to them
They're - the contracted form of 'they are'

Confusion over - no more mistakes, please.

If only ...

There's also a great program you can install called IE Spell. Do a Google for it. Allows you to spell check stuff you write on this forum.

Yes, that one REALLY annoys the hell out of me too...

As a kid I was told to remember it with:

" They're over there with their dog"

...well it worked for me

And a simple solution to the massive it's / its mis-use:

The only time to use it's is when you are abbreviating "it is". Every other time you should use its .

Simple!

I find the biggest bugbear is the misuse of 'of'.

'Could of' ... instead of 'could've' (though preferably 'could have')
'Would of' ... instead of 'would've' or 'would have'
'should have' ... you get the picture!

Perhaps this is a small sign of a fundamental lack of teaching?

I am surprised by the number of otherwise literate and intelligent people who misuse 'to' and 'too'

<Mr Green glares at Andrew>

It's far more likely to be down to representing what people said:
the sound of "could've" (i.e. 'could have' abbreviated) has slipped towards 'could of').

With regards to Mojo Radio, I do think it's "sister station" (in the sense that they launched on the same day) "heat" should have a capital letter in it's ID tag. I know the logo may be lowercase but it should not extend to the EPG listing too.

I think the EPG should say SKYnews.

Anyhow - I think people hear "should've" which does sound like "should have" and therefore children start saying it too.

Totally careless spelling irritates me more than anything - when there's a blatantly obvious spellis misakt which the writer just cannot be bothered to correct.