Category: Life

The following check list should help you with your grammar. It’s certainly made my grammar what it is today.

1. Verbs HAS to agree with their subjects.
2. Prepositions are not words to end sentences with.
3. And don’t start a sentence with a conjunction.
4. It is wrong to ever split an infinitive.
5. Avoid clichés like the plague. (They’re old hat)
6. Also, always avoid annoying alliteration.
7. Be more or less specific.
8. Parenthetical remarks (however relevant) are (usually) unnecessary.
9. Also too, never, ever use repetitive redundancies.
10. No sentence fragments.
11. Contractions aren’t necessary and shouldn’t be used.
12. Foreign words and phrases are not apropos.
13. Do not be redundant; do not use more words than necessary; it’s highly superfluous.
14. One should NEVER generalize.
15. Comparisons are as bad as clichés.
16. Eschew ampersands & abbreviations, etc.
17. One-word sentences? Eliminate.
18. Analogies in writing are like feathers on a snake.
19. The passive voice is to be ignored.
20. Eliminate commas, that are, not necessary. Parenthetical words however should be enclosed in commas.
21. Never use a big word when a diminutive one would suffice.
22. Use words correctly, irregardless of how others use them.
23. Understatement is always the absolute best way to put forth earth-shaking ideas.
24. Eliminate quotations. As Ralph Waldo Emerson said, “I hate quotations. Tell me what you know.”
25. If you’ve heard it once, you’ve heard it a thousand times: resist hyperbole; not one writer in a million can use it correctly.
26. Puns are for children, not groan readers.
27. Go around the barn at high noon to avoid colloquialisms.
28. Even IF a mixed metaphor sings, it should be derailed.
29. Who needs rhetorical questions?
30. Exaggeration is a billion times worse than understatement.
31. Proofread carefully to see if you any words out.

Impress your friends and relatives, talk to them in Latin. Remember: “quidquid latine dictum sit altum viditur” (anything said in Latin sounds profound).

New laws come into place from Monday with regard to child seats. In a nutshell, if your child is under 11 years old and less than 150cms, then they need a child seat of some kind.

This is likely to cause problems, for example, when you go to pick up other children. The responsibility is the drivers so if someone has forgotten to supply a seat, you can be in trouble if you then drive them.

But there IS one big issue, as I see it. Booster seats have a maximum weight of 36kg. If your child is less than 11, less than 150cms tall and over 36kg then what do they do? Well, according to the Department of Transport, they should still use the seat. Even though it’s against manufacturers recommendations. Does that make sense to you, because it doesn’t to me?

Love them or loathe them, the dentist is there to fulfil an important role, and the health of your teeth is not something you should ignore.

A few years ago I read some great advice from some actual dentist, that I thought I’d reproduce. First of all, anonymously but still with the authors permission, a little about how NHS and private dentists work.