Yesterday for the first time in ages I caught Countdown on Channel 4.

Jeff Stelling doesn’t seem right to me (but a lot better than Des O’Connor anyway.)

But the numbers game! The replacement for Carol Vorderman said “times it by.” Times it by!

She’s a grown woman, presumably with a Maths degree or something involving Maths at least.

She should know there is no such verb as “times it by.” It’s multiply.

Susie Dent in dictionary corner ought to be correcting her.

[Carol Vorderman also annoyed me with the way she set out the arithmetic as she would write things like:-
100/50 = 2 x 6 = (12 + 1) x 25 = 325. The “new” woman (I’m sorry, I don’t know her name) did this sort of thing too.

Now, 100/50 = 2. It does not equal 2 x 6.
2 x 6 = 12; not (12 + 1) x 25.

It might seem like a little thing …….
but I get faced with such arithmetical rubbish on almost a daily basis in my day job.

Don’t give the pupils any excuse, please.]

Gordon McDougall, chairman of Livingston Football Club, which was recently demoted two divisions for breaking insolvency rules, has complained that Brown McMaster, the Scottish Football League’s president, should resign as he is also in breach of SFL rules: to wit, he has a financial interest in two League clubs.

The rights and wrongs of this are not the subject of this post. What is, is the fact that McDougall says in the BBC clip (which I first saw on Reporting Scotland) that McMaster was “flaunting” the rules.

So, here is the image:-

Brown McMaster stands in front of the cameras with the rules held in his hand and says, “Here’s the rules. Get your rules here,” like the best street hawker.

Flaunt:- v. t. – To display ostentatiously; to make an impudent show of.

Flout:- v. t. – To mock or insult; to treat with contempt.

Do you think Mr McDougall might, just perhaps, actually have meant “flout” the rules?

When you are in a supermarket does anything make the heart sink quite so much as the above two words?

What they usually mean is “smaller” or “worse tasting because made with cheaper ingredients.”

Never in my experience do they actually mean the product concerned has been improved.

I’ve now been doing this blogging thingy for a full calendar year. (To my loyal readers it just feels like longer.)

In that time I’€™ve made 305 posts – nearly one a day I’€™m astonished to note – and had 323 legitimate comments (including pingbacks.) Thank you to all who have taken the time to read my ravings and to the smaller number who have contributed.

I’ve had visitors from the Americas (North and South) Europe, Australasia, and the Near and Far East as well as from the UK.

There have also been over 4,000 spam comments. Why are a lot of them in Cyrillic?

According to the stats, apart from Gordon Lennon’€™s sad death the most interest has been in my Art Deco posts. I keep finding new Deco buildings in Scotland to include so that’s an ever extending topic. I’€™ll be doing a series on Art Deco in Dunfermline (where I work) soon but I think the most comments on any one post have been about the poem “€œThe Boy In The Train.”€ Amazing what a piece of doggerel can engender.

As to this post’€™s title, my elder son said to me recently, “€œYou come across as a terrible pedant on your blog, Dad.” He was using the word terrible in the colloquial sense of excessive, of course, rather than meaning that I was not very good at being pedantic – or that my posts inspire fear.

Guilty as charged as far as pedantry is concerned. The good lady swears I could be pedantic for Scotland. She is long suffering it’€™s true.

I can’t promise I’€™ll be cutting it down in future, though.

I got married.

On a bank holiday (in nineteen hundred and long time ago.) My English-born and raised cousin, who was no stranger to Scotland, came up for the do and when my father mentioned getting the signatures to the registrar afterwards, said, “I thought you said it was a Bank Holiday.”

We said, “It is. A bank holiday. The banks are shut, everything else is open.”

Brief one, this. Again, mainly for our transatlantic cousins.

Not in a moment. For a moment.

Speaking of supermarkets, I am of course the sort of person who feels like taking a marker pen to amend those notices at the “quick” tills for those who have only a handful of purchases.

The signs ought of course to read, “Fewer Than X Items.” (Insert whatever number applies.)

Fewer, because “items” describes a plural quantity. For example; fewer accidents would be a boon.

If supermarkets had fewer notices with mistakes like this I would find myself with less to moan about.

“Less” ought only to be used with singular nouns (as in “more haste, less speed”) or in expressions like this post’s title, or my previous sentence.

This one is mainly for our transatlantic cousins – but I’ve noticed it creeping on to supermarket labels/notices here.

Regular means occurring at intervals. Even intervals.
It doesn’t mean “normal,” it doesn’t mean “less than jumbo sized.”
It means “every so often.”

How regularly do you think I might have to say this?

What?

No. I’ll just have a black coffee, thanks.

How do you pronounce the past tense of the verb “to eat?” (I mean you in particular, not you in the general sense.)

Like nearly everybody else where I grew up I have always followed the usual rules of English orthography in this instance and so pronounce the word the way it is spelled – in other words exactly as in the way I say the number 8. In any conversations I’ve had with others I have never failed to be understood when using ate in that way.

So why do others say “et?” How on Earth can the letter combination -ate be transmogrified in this way? And why do the same people not say, for example, I waited with betted breath, or my curiosity was setted, or he suffered a dreadful fet?

It’s nonsense. I never et a meal in my life. I ate quite a lot, though.