Ignoring their proffers

“The individual did not avail himself of the opportunity – in fact, he has ignored our proffers,” quoth Tom Allensworth about the alleged Avsim hacker.

The noun “proffer” was a surprise. The verb “proffer” is a bit arch (just like “quoth” and the adjective “arch”) but I know it and use it. The noun appears to be a legal term, and more commonly seen in the US than in the UK, judging by Google hit counts.

If the Wikipedia entry is anything to go by, Mr Allensworth was not using the word in its legal sense.

Nice of them to show up

I’m a fan of a certain TV show, and I was struck by the online headline of a Times article on 16th April: “Paula and Noorul showed up on The Apprentice“. Oh dear. Could The Times be running their headlines through some naff commercially available grammar checker?

Back to front

There’s been some discussion lately about British headline-writing, and the place that most webusers come into contact with it is at the BBC News site. There’s a particularly bad example on there today: Army attack “brutal” (also Army attack “Brutal and cowardly”), which appears to mean the exact opposite of what took place.

The Birmingham Position

Now that I’ve started supporting the abolition of the possessive apostrophe, I was delighted to discover that my council has been standing up for this position against the grammar nazis. Although I don’t like seeing signs saying “Kings Norton” or “St Pauls Square”, the fact is that most people don’t notice, care or understand, and it’s about time we stopped kidding ourselves that they ought to.

I admired Councillor Martin Mullaney for going on the radio and putting the council’s position clearly and calmly, in the face of overblown attacks from the likes of John Richards. One of the latter’s silliest remarks was “It’s a simple rule and so many people get it wrong.”

From the archive

Birmingham News, 24 June 2004: 

(Brummies don’t talk foreign.)