Un par de jours sans bloguer- toujours rien a declarer. Still having nowt to write never stopped me before. Sita told me off for writing ‘me and jose went’ instead of ‘jose and I’ a couple of posts ago, so here we go with some of my writing tics. I got an A in my GCSE English Language and I was a TEFL teacher for long enough to know which rules I’m breaking on a daily basis. For what it’s worth, it helps to read this blog with a slight somerset burr. Top 10 Grammatical Rules I give short shrift to:

• 10. Subject/ Object pronoun difference. Bert’n’me couldn’t be arsed.
• 9. Using the subjunctive in conditional clauses. If I was you I’d use more sugar.
• 8. Ending sentences with prepositions. Hot, sticky climes are summink I’ll not put up with.
• 7. Capitalisation. some days not. Other days yes.
• 6. Spelling. Some words I can’t spell first time with and not having a spell checker to hand, I’ll just shove in more letters until it looks right. N.B. doesn’t necccasserilly always work.
• 5. Overcompensation for Americanisms. It’s been an ongoing battle against MS Word for it to recognise English spelling as default. Not just things like colour, centre and Yours Sincerely (instead of Sincerely), but the subtler ones like travellers (with 2 Ls) and realise (with an S). For me, no words end in -ize.
• 4. Sentence fragments. Quote from the Simpsons. Lisa has made a grammar robot:
  

  Lisa: Almost done. Just lay still.
  Linguo: Lie still.
  Lisa: I knew that. Just testing.
  Linguo: Sentence fragment.
  Lisa: ‘Sentence fragment’ is also a sentence fragment.
  Linguo: Must conserve battery power.

• 3. Overuse of ‘…’ … Not antigrammatical, but surely bad grammar… Just how my brain works I’m afraid… In conversation I’ll do the same… trail off each sentence into mumbling. So that’s what they’re there for…
• 2. The Jean Teasdale school of parenthetical asides (and consequently where to put the punctuation.). ?
• 1. Starting every other sentence with I. Well, it is a personal blog called self-absorbtion central, and I know not everyone wants there actions engraved forever in hypertext on teh internets.

So there you go. If you notice any others, feel free to comment them if you find yourself with nowt better to do today.
Happy birthday Ms Butler and Valentine’s to the rest of you. Happy B-day Guadalajara too, 464 today!