So … Tell Me Three Thing’s That Are Wrong With This Main Headline

This Christmas I got around to watching a Russian film that I’d wanted to see for a while - “9^th Company” - a Soviet version of “Full Metal Jacket”.

On the back of the case the plot summary referred to the historical event on which the film is based and the fact that, shortly after this battle, the Soviet Union had “seized to exist”.

Seized?

Now, I know that my alleged “pedantry” is a family joke (the quote marks are there because I always think the word itself infers an unreasonably held view) but … give me a cotton-picking break!

Yes … I am constantly irritated by the increasingly poor use of apostrophes and capitalisation and the confusion surrounding singular and plural verbs. But, above all, I hate the mistakes of so-called “professionals” who have no reason for getting it wrong - unless it comes with a refund.

Especially signwriters!

The other week I followed a van belonging to a cleaning company that specialises in “Offices … Schools … Clinics … Factories” (none of which warrants an initial capital) but, then, even my car ground a gear when we both spotted that last word was spelt … “Factorys”.

I have also seen a tree surgeon’s vehicle that proclaimed “Tree’s are our business” … which is surpassed only by the fast food outlet facing the main road alongside Manchester United’s ground - which sells “burger’s” and “kebab’s”.

I can forgive the amateurish A-board outside a Timperley café that advertised “Maggies all day breakfast” but fee-charging professed professionals should be cast into eternal damnation!

Talking of inappropriate initial capitals, I recently edited a hospital website where doctors were “Doctors” and nurses were “Nurses” and the hospital, itself, was even a “Hospital” … with a “Car Park”.

Companies with managing directors and chief executives always seem to call them “Managing Directors” and “Chief Executives”. And when updating my will recently I saw that, according to my lawyer, I am a “Husband” and my wife is a “Wife”.

Thank goodness for Patrick O’Neill, editor of Cheshire Life, who shores up my shaky sanity by agreeing with my denial of capitals to such institutions as “Cathedrals”, “Churches”, “Bishops” and the rest. “The Queen, the Pope and my Aunt Bessie take capitals,” he says, “everyone else is lower case.”

And that especially includes restaurant vegetables like “Cauliflower”, “Carrots” and “Peas”. So many menus (thankfully excluding the mainly well-written one at Manchester’s Lowry Hotel) seem to think every word takes an initial capital - including “And”.

Technology is sometimes to blame. Bill Gates is probably largely responsible for the default spellchecker gradually introducing the American “z” into words such as ‘organisation’ and ‘materialise’ as well as losing the ‘u’ in colour and honour.

But the main culprit is the growing view of so many people that these things simply don’t matter any more.

They stick to the belief that Manchester Council “have” announced something, the government “have” done something or such-and-such a charity “have” received a donation.

In Manchester, recently, I saw that Slater Menswear “have” moved to a different location.

Oh no it “haven‘t”.

None of these is a plural entity. They are singular and take “has”. Despite appearances, even Marks and Spencer is singular.

There are other things, of course, that bother me less but still have great amusement value.

Like tautology - the grand art of saying something twice - which has crept into our common language to the degree that we no longer question phrases like “forward planning” (is there any other kind?) or the staple promise of the direct mail industry - “free gift” (sometimes FREE GIFT but never, ever, of course, Free Gift). Are there some that recipients have to pay for?

And then there are the common everyday phrases that don’t mean quite what you think they do.

“Decimated”, for instance, does not mean destroyed or wiped out. It means reduced by one tenth. (Dating back to Roman times when, after a poor performance in battle, the punishment killing of one soldier in every 10 was a somewhat unsubtle way of encouraging a higher level of future commitment from the others.)

And “quantum leap” - which is not another way of saying “giant step”. Anything ‘quantum’ is so infinitesimally tiny that it usually can’t even be measured.

Jargon, too, is always good for a giggle. Like the Manchester lawyer who wrote the definition of a “distance contract” as one where there is no “simultaneous physical presence” of the buyer and seller.

Simultaneous physical presence?

For the rest of us that’s a “meeting”.

Now did I hear muttering, from the back row, that sounded suspiciously like “get a life” ….?

Fair enough! But I’m getting out of here before the mobile phone text generation moves into “Senior Management”.