Spelling police

[Joel Ninety]

When I lived in Liverpool I noticed on a billboard advertising some Police campaign or other it said "Don't loose your head" or something. If an authority cannot spell something correctly on a giant visual public message board then surely the future of our language is doomed.

[Keith]

and you thought we were pedants?

Tesco checks out wording change

Tesco is to change the wording of signs on its fast-track checkouts to avoid any linguistic dispute.

The supermarket giant is to replace its current "10 items or less" notices with signs saying "Up to 10 items".

Tesco's move follows uncertainty over whether the current notices should use "fewer" instead of "less".

The new wording was suggested to Tesco by language watchdog The Plain English Campaign. Tesco said the change would be phased in across its stores.

"Saying up to 10 items is easy to understand and avoids any debate," said a spokesman for The Plain English Campaign.

"Fewer" should be used when you are talking about items that can be counted individually, for example, "fewer than 10 apples".

"Less" is correct when quantities cannot be individually counted in that case, e.g. "I would like less water".

Tesco is the UK's largest supermarket group with 2,106 outlets across the country.

I thought the Plain English Campaign was supposed to get rid of this crap, not encourage it?

[Phoenix]

Up To 10? Is that 9 or less?

[Keith]

...or less?

Fewer Brian, fewer. It's less water, didn't you read the piece?

What I want to know is what if the water is in bottles? Then the quantity can be counted individually, so would you then say "I want fewer water"

And if you have eleven apples you can't use that isle but if you put them in a bag together, they become one item so you can? (Or you could buy two less? I mean fewer?)

Don't people have anything better to do with their lives than post crap on message boards?

[Christies Child]

Don't people have anything better to do with their lives than post crap on message boards?[/quote]


My wife has just asked the very same question...

My reply.....'it's better than having to complete a bloody Directors report for tomorrows meeting'...... b*****d

[Posh]

Thanks Mark. My ire was aimed at the lazy ones.

As for the comment saying I shouldn't have said what I was doing. I disagree. I'd rather know my post could be edited rather than find it had.

Right I'm off to get some sweets from the tobogganist.

[Plain Peter]

Up To 10? Is that 9 or less?

If you're asked to count up to 10, then you don't stop at 9

[Phoenix]

At school I was asked to "count to 10".