ATTN: Copyeditors and Grammar Fiends

lol at maths panic on this thread.

xpost It's a misplaced (or dangling) modifier.

Should sentence starting with "Surely" end with a question mark?

not unless it's a question or you want to use a question mark

Surely sentences of this type usually act as rhetorical questions?

Surely they do.

Surely (ha) that depends on whether you mean "surely" as "certainly" or as "it should certainly be the case that..."?

Sorry, that last one should be "it should certainly be the case that...shouldn't it?", shouldn't it?

Yes, indeed. The latter is far more common, though. It's just that sometimes the sentence is long and by the time you get to the end, the question mark might surprise the reader.

Though that could be the case with a real question, too.

i think i read somewhere that questions can be divided into direct and indirect ones, the direct ones need a question mark and with the indirect ones its voluntary, "surely" is mostly used indirectly i would say and thus does not need a question mark.

as for the problem with "he or she", i use "its", works like a charm. "the tavern-keeper must spellbind its customers".

low income countries or low-income countries?

depends. are the countries low and ... no, sorry, i can't actually find any occasion when it wouldn't be low-income countries :)

yeah, I thought so. I just keep seeing it without the hyphen.

yeh, you will. people be punctuation mooks :(

but as long as some of us keep flying the flag, there is hope for a better dawn.

(christ. that beer has gone straight to my head.)

What part of speech is "low-income" in that case? It's not a compound adjective, is it, cause that's two adjectives together.

Should there be a question mark at the end of my previous sentence?

The World Bank has two types of member countries: income and target. Income countries pay in, target countries take out. However, it's harder to get money down from the hilly high countries, so they prefer to use low income countries for their banking pleasures. or something

C-

yeh but I cans ues a question mark so blah

There are some people who would argue that precisely because few people would be confused about the meaning of "low income country" that the hyphen isn't necessary. I tend to err on the side of using it, though.

what about least developed countries? I don't think I've ever seen that with a hyphen. what is the actual rule here?

the rule is simply to only hyphenate whenever confusion is in the air, science fiction, science-fiction book, science-fiction book-club, peanuts.

Perhaps there is a different thread for just ranting, but I'd just like to make known my weeks-long annoyance at the huuuuuuuge plastic sign outside the Hounslow Asda that promises seasonal produce "at it's best".

And also the worst attempt at pun ever, which can be found on the wall of the waiting room at my local doc's surgery. It is an NHS poster for Hounslow Stop Smoking group.

"It's not easy to quit smoking, but with our help it's less of a fag."

I'd like to think that the money they saved by not making the poster good was added to the wage packets of the brilliant and overworked doctors and nurses there. But I suspect not.

"drag"? is that really the pun?

No. "It's a fag" is slang for "It's a pain". I like the slogan!

Really? Fag = it's a pain? I have never heard fag used that way in my life. Drag would praps have been better.

Lemme think. I have seen 'fagging' used as a term for the hazing that older form students at British public schools inficted upon the lower forms. I have also seen 'fagged out' as a synonym for 'tired'. Either of these useages might, with a bit of tweaking, be generalized into 'it's a fag' to denote that an activity is unpleasant or tiresome.

Still, I have never heard or seen that particular useage, yet.

"it's a fag" = "it's a hassle". that's totally normal colloquial english, i thought, along with "i can't be fagged" = "i can't be bothered".

Signs at Gatwick signs after security yesterday:

ANYTHING YOU BUY HERE INCLUDING BOTTLES OF WATER ARE ALLOWED ON BOARD.

Commas would've saved the day

not really!