Wonderful pedantry

I am a pedant. Many of my friends would say it is one of my defining characteristics. I cannot help being pedantic. Most often I see it as an intolerance on my part to growing incorrectness.

It's a debate I have with myself from time to time - mostly when it concerns the English Language. I make mistakes in it, but I try not to do so. I know which is the correct version of its/it's to use. I know their vs. they're vs. there. I can differentiate between two, to and too.

I also have dislikes apart from simple misspellings (and I am not talking typos here - this editor doesn't spell check so some may get passed me).

My main bugbear is "try and". To me that suggests you are going to try AND you are going to do it. Surely it should be "try to". I am going to "try to" write grammatically correct English. Second in my pet-hates list comes "should of". I know it sounds like that but it's quite simply wrong. "Should have", "could have" - it's not difficult.

So tonight when a friend emails me a link to a page on the BBC website with twenty examples of grammar it brought a smile to my face. She obviously knows me well.

Here's the link...

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/magazine/7595509.stm

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