"Oh no. I think flanner's post was much too well wrought to have "mistakes." Don't know, of course, but I think it was a delightfully clever take-in."

That's very kind of you. Thank you.

But there was a seriously shocking mistake in my post. It should, of course, have read:

&quot;You might wish to - when <b> you've got nothing </b> better to carefully turn your mind to - understand there are some wrongly imported Latinisms us obsessive pedants won't put up with.&quot;

To my compatriots: please forgive me.

I remember my poor husband desperately trying to get a box of matches in the US.
Finally, I said, &quot;mare ches&quot;.
Oh, &quot;mare ches&quot;.
I also had a nice thing when a colleague of mine introduced me to a friend of hers and said to the friend, &quot;Are you still riding?&quot;
&quot;Oh&quot;, quoth I, &quot;do you have your own horse?&quot;
After a bit of bafflement, I realised that she had said, &quot;writing&quot;

What did the Flanner-pooch choose this thread to be read to out of for?

Miss P- can you please translate your last post for us Yanks - it makes absolutely no sense to us.

As well as the &quot;law&quot; against split infinitives, there is one against ending a sentence with a preposition,
I adapted a classic example which is supposed to have been said by a nanny to her charge.
&quot;What did you choose that book to be read to out of for?&quot;

Now we must challenge Flanner to find a sentence ending with even more than four ;-)

Right, Miss P. I had to run and find out ;-)

It seems as though the Guinness book of Records had as the longest example a protest from a boy who didn't want to be read excerpts from
a book about Australia as a bedtime story:

&quot;What did you bring that
book that I don't want to be read to from out of about 'Down Under'
up for?&quot;

A bloke then wrote to Guinness with the following:

&quot;What did you say
that the sentence with the most prepositions at the end was 'What
did you bring that book that I don't want to be read to from out of
about &quot;Down Under&quot; up for?' for?

&lt;&lt;As well as the &quot;law&quot; against split infinitives, there is one against ending a sentence with a preposition,&gt;&gt;

Not in the U.S. According to Bill Bryson the &quot;rule&quot; is about one century out of touch. The &quot;rule was enshrined by an eighteenth century Anglican bisop, Robert Lowth who urged his readers not to end sentences with a preposition ... Today, happily it is universally dismissed as a pointless affectation.&quot; Bryson writes that in many sentences the preposition can only come at the end.

&quot;What is this world coming to?&quot;
&quot;This bed hasn't been slept in.&quot;

Merriam Webster, among other grammar books, makes the same point.

&quot;What does all this add up to?&quot;

I lately lost a preposition;
It hid, I thought, beneath my chair.
And angrily I cried, &quot;Perdition!
Up from out of in under there.&quot;

Correctness is my vade mecum,
And straggling phrases I abhor,
And yet I wondered, &quot;What should he come
Up from out of in under for?&quot;

--Morris Bishop

&quot;&quot;What did you choose that book to be read to out of for?&quot;

Ends with THREE prepositions,not four. (&quot;out&quot; can be a preposition on some rare occasions - like &quot;From out the Flaminian Gate&quot; - but there hasn't been one for a couple of hundred years)

&quot;The kind of thing I just can't put up with&quot; ends with ONE preposition, not two.

If you want to be a fully accredited member of the Pedants' Association, you've got to understand the difference between a preposition and an adverb - and not even the Association's deluded fundamentalist wing fantasises you can't end a sentence with an adverb, ever. If you don't, it's an association you'll be put out of.

We salute the master.
BTW, I put &quot;law&quot; in inverted commas, because I had my tongue in my cheek.

If you really want to offend a Briton, tell them that they don't appreciate irony.

MissPrism wrote: &quot;If you really want to offend a Briton, tell them that they don't appreciate irony.&quot;

That's because the British consider themselves clever, and don't like to have people pointing out the obvious as if they hadn't already noticed it.

&quot;That's because the British consider themselves clever...&quot;

Not so. It's because we don't like to be thought stupid. More importantly, we don't like other people to think they're being thought stupid.

Which is why all we see those silly flaggers of intent (like smileys in emails and acronyms such as LOL in postings) as intended to imply the audience is too stupid to understand. Therefore offensive. Therefore unEnglish.

Though, to give him his due, I've yet to see a smiley or an LOL in one of Padraig's posts.

As so often: the (Southern) Irish are more like the English than either group likes to admit. It's those humourless Welsh, Scotch and Ulsterfolk who give Celts a bad name.

flanneruk wrote: &quot;Though, to give him his due, I've yet to see a smiley or an LOL in one of Padraig's posts.&quot;

And you never will, unless it is used ironically. But if there were a device to represent the hand-cranking gesture, I might be tempted to use it.

Paddy - you voice a wish that i think scores of Fodorites may wish to be able to do to Flimflanneur

me not being one of them however as i really enjoy any flimflanneur posts - despite his lack of proper edikation, his takes are always compelling reading, as fuxxed up as they often are in terms of logic - but his grammar is usually, but not always, impeccable, as indeed befits a Public School matriculator, of which he is not, surprisingly - he's really just a poor boy from Liverpiddle - a Catholic at that, supposedly - but really he's my favorite Fodor poster so don't diss flimflanneur IMO

&quot;Humourless&quot; Scots? Pshaw! Some remedial watching of Chic Murray mightn't go amiss.

ttt

Hi, oh!

I was in London for the first time in 2005. Our group walked into a restaurant (more like a pub) and seated ourselves. We conversed while watching for the waiter. After about 10 minutes we were looking around in search of someone to take at least a drink order...and then it happened. I noticed people approaching the bar to order. Just be observant in eating establishments. Not all places are like this but some do require you to approach the bar. It was smooth sailing once we caught on.

Another thing is the ice issue. Americans seem to require their beverages super duper ice cold (I'm guilty!). One of my friends was served a glass of cola sans the ice. She asked for ice and received two cubes in a glass which melted in no time. So either ask for a lot of ice up front or just learn to go with the flow and adapt.

I'm sure you will have a great time. I loved my London experience. Like I said, don't be too rigid about things…just go with the flow. Have a blast!!

A rose by any other name will still smell the same.

Hi Waldo - That reminds me of a saying that I heard somewhere - somewhere - Oh, I don't know where:

You can put lipstick on a pig, but it's still a pig. ;;) ((*))