The Grammar Nazi Is In!

If the conditions you set for your argument are plural, they can be called criteria. If you only have one condition, it's the criterion.

There is no expression in English (whether in the UK or anywhere else) that starts would of. The phrase would have is part of the conditional perfect tense, which only boring old gits like me know, and using it adds a certain elegance to your English.

The pluperfect tense is threatened these days. Myself, I would employ someone who knew it was perfectly okay to say he had been ill, even though most Americans seem to have given up on it while ironically keeping the expression I would have gone if I knew. That just sent a shiver up my spine. If you've learned Latin, it's called the sequence of tenses. But it's really all about making your meaning clear.

If you mean also or excessively the word to use is too. Otherwise it's to. He's rich too is fine, as is he's too rich, though frankly I don't know many people in either category myself these days.

The plural of a word ending in -y is -ies. Thus one bastard Tory is spelled like this. But several are spelled bastard Tories. May you always live in a place where there are none of these creatures. Notice there are no apostrophes anywhere. Plurals don't need apostrophes, just -s or -es.

There is such a thing as a plural verb: so his anger is understandable is fine but you need to write his anger and disappointment are understandable.

The words may and might are different, although no one seems to know that now. So you may have told me and you might have told me are quite different phrases. You may have told me means there's a possibility you told me, while you might have told me means something else entirely., usually something starting FFS...

Not that any of this means a damned thing. I would settle for people reading what they put up on the screen before they click enter so we don't get mat/mate/men instead of me and so that/than/then and the are not interchangeable. Or am I the only person whose eye stops on these mistakes and loses a bit of the message? And isn't this what technology is about? Communication? The least we can do is make sure we are trying to get the message over.

That said, I'm now going back to re-read this blog entry just in case...