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This is a question B3TA fixes the world

Moon Monkey says: Turn into Jeremy Clarkson for a moment, and tell us about the things that are so obviously wrong with the world, and how they should be fixed. Extra points for ludicrous over-simplification, blatant mis-representation, and humourous knob-gags.

(, Thu 22 Sep 2011, 12:53)
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"instore"
"See instore for details." Why not "see inside"? It's shorter. The meaning is clear. And, crucially, it does not butcher the beautiful, diverse English language in the name of corporate analinguistics.

It's easy to stop this by using a variation on the fine old Roman practice of decimation. When a company uses the word "instore" in its "signage", one in ten employees - and the whole board - should be burned alive at the stake in public. Passages from Fowler's Dictionary of Modern English Usage should be read aloud during the process for the sake of their lost souls.

Next week: the grocer's apostrophe
(, Fri 23 Sep 2011, 10:44, 4 replies)
On a similar vein...
This [sofa/washing machine/laptop/whatever] now only three five nine!

That's not a price, it's a sequence of numbers! Is your time that precious that you can't afford the extra syllables to say three hundred and fifty nine pounds?

"'scuse me, how much is this sofa?"
"That one is four seven nine, sir"
"Four pounds seventy nine?! Wow, I'll take six please!"

Shop workers hate me.
(, Fri 23 Sep 2011, 10:49, closed)
Clicky..
...purely for the use of analinguistics. I shall need to be careful at work from now on not to substitute that when I'm talking about analytics.
(, Fri 23 Sep 2011, 11:00, closed)
Shirley
grocers' apostrophe
(, Fri 23 Sep 2011, 12:02, closed)
It depends
... on the number of grocers involved.
(, Fri 23 Sep 2011, 16:00, closed)

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