A Kamm-ouflaged Pedant - a review of Oliver Kamm's book on English usage.

There are three different kinds of people who write books on grammar and usage. The first consists of linguists and grammarians who have proper academic credentials in the study of language. The second group is extremely rare - writers who have absolutely no knowledge of grammar and I really mean zero knowledge. Most ignorant people aren't that shameless. Singapore's Speak Good English Movement is the only organisation I know that writes grammar books that are totally wrong and the people who shamelessly write them are clueless about English grammar as my recent review of their latest grammar book demonstrates. The third group that writes books on grammar and usage is made up of mainly journalists. Unlike the second group that knows nothing about grammar and cannot even construct grammatical sentences themselves or make an official speech without errors, these journalists usually have some working knowledge of grammar and they can write beautiful prose but this knowledge is too skimpy for them to write books on grammar and usage.

Pat's Schoolhouse again!

Last year, I blogged about an error in Pat's Schoolhouse's advertisement. They wrote in their ad:

Pat's Schoolhouse provides a distinctly unique education for over 28 years...

As I explained in my blog post, the sentence should read: 'Pat's Schoolhouse has been providing a distinctly unique education for over 28 years...'

I've just received in my letter box Pat's Schoolhouse's 2017 ad and this time, the flyer looks even more attractive than their 2016 ad:

I am quite pleased to say that this time, they didn't use the simple present. The first sentence of their ad which contains only 3 sentences reads:

LTA's illiterate poster

In response to my last post which includes a photo of an embarrassing poster by the Land Transport Authority (LTA), a reader posted this comment in a vigorous but futile attempt to defend LTA's indefensible blunder:

Why pick on shopping centres in Singapore?

Last week, the Straits Times published a photo of a poster found in a shopping centre in Singapore that contained grammatical errors: