for an ad-free Fetcheveryone experience!

Grammar pedants - help please.

3 lurkers | 97 watchers

Pothunter May 2024 11:32pm, 6 May 2024 8,792 posts	0 Pothunter Half the problem is getting someone to articulate the rules and the other half is understanding the knock-on implications of making a “simple” change to a single field. On the passports I believe it has something to do with the machine-readable page and the standards which have been implemented. There is a 19 page PDF which explains what is and isn’t allowed for names in passports: assets.publishing.service.gov.uk
JCB May 2024 4:33pm, 7 May 2024 5,655 posts	0 JCB Good point Oranj wrote:I think the problem lies in there being two apostrophes: 'smart' and 'straight' (the same applies to double quotes). When I worked on text mark up software, we'd have to do plenty more work to make sure we'd handled both cases correctly. Don't get me started on prime, double prime and triple prime! (The variations of surname prefixes such as Van and Mac would also drive us to distraction. Van, van, van..., van der, Van der, etc...) There's also backquote. Never saw these issues until MS Word and those darn smart quotes. I work in computer programming and often will come across cases of characters causing problems. (And typographical characters too 😀)
JCB May 2024 4:42pm, 7 May 2024 5,656 posts	0 JCB Pothunter wrote:Half the problem is getting someone to articulate the rules and the other half is understanding the knock-on implications of making a “simple” change to a single field. On the passports I believe it has something to do with the machine-readable page and the standards which have been implemented. There is a 19 page PDF which explains what is and isn’t allowed for names in passports: assets.publishing.service.gov.uk Interesting article. Haven't read it all and kind of disagree on diacritics. However this stood out:
JCB May 2024 4:52pm, 7 May 2024 5,657 posts	0 JCB For people with multiple forenames or surnames that are too long and the additional ones then use initials, it would be bad if that sequence of initials created an offensive word or a trademark. 🫠
NordRunner May 2024 9:03pm, 7 May 2024 4,274 posts	0 NordRunner You mean like J Arther Rank?
Muttley May 2024 10:01pm, 7 May 2024 3,194 posts	0 Muttley Take the test! theguardian.com I got the last three wrong but I did get all the proper grammar ones right.
Muttley May 2024 10:02pm, 7 May 2024 3,195 posts	0 Muttley ^ The apostrophe test, I meant.
Northern Exile May 2024 10:08pm, 7 May 2024 10,292 posts	0 Northern Exile I got all right bar Q.9 and I'm disputing that. Surely there were two potentially correct answers there? We don't know how many princes are relevant here, so to someone without any prior knowledge it would have to be a guess.
Muttley May 2024 11:12pm, 7 May 2024 3,196 posts	0 Muttley I didn't go to Oxford so didn't know that one. And I got the fo'c's'le question wrong, which I would expect an old sea dog like NE to get right
paulcook May 2024 11:17pm, 7 May 2024 4,725 posts	0 paulcook I also got 9 wrong but the blurb below the "correct" answer suggests it's not really correct.