Monday 16 January 2012

The Final Problem

cumberbatch

I just loved Sherlock last night. I won’t say any more in case some of you have recorded it to watch later. I have my own theories all about how the ending was arranged, and hope it means there will be another series later in the year. The reviews were out promptly, and mostly favourable.

But I just have to rant about this line from the article yesterday in the Mail about Benedict Cumberbatch and the fact he has just split up with his girlfriend.

“The actor also appears in Steven Spielberg's latest hit War Horse, for which he came out of an intended hiatus to appear in.”
Does that sentence make sense?

In what kind of English is it written?

What sort of ‘journalist’ wrote that?

One is tempted to quote the line attributed [probably incorrectly] to Winston Churchill

"this is the kind of tedious nonsense up with which I will not put"

Like Lynne Truss, and Bob, I think I am becoming a geranium in my old age!

"When you eliminate the impossible, whatever remains - however improbable - must be the truth."

4 comments:

  1. That sentence is enough to make me shudder.

    I enjoyed Sherlock last night, but I think they wimped out on the ending, it should have finished , how to say this spoiler free, slightly earlier than it did.

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  2. I was fascinated and baffled by the Sherlock last night.........surely it can't be the last episode but if it isn't how does it make any sense?

    In fact how do any of them make any sense? I probably like them so much because I haven't a clue what's going on most of the time.

    As for journalists - it seems to me that most of what they say is more about boosting their own egos and status than reporting what goes on, that's why they talk so much nonsense and in such bad English.

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  3. I have been accused of belonging to the 'grammar police' too. J and KL just groan at me, whereas I have an ally in K. Her degree is in language, literacy and communication, and she now teaches English at high school, so we can be 'geraniums' when we are together.

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  4. My DH says he read on the BBC news website that there will be another series of Sherlock; they'd be nuts if there wasn't. We haven't seen last night's episode yet but it's on iplayer.
    I, too, am a pedant, maybe to make up for not being much of a pedestrian (can't walk far). It drives me wild to see misplaced apostrophes; what is it that belongs to apples that they are selling? I am in my mid-forties and was not taught rules of grammar at school, but most of what we read was grammatical, presumably because previous generations had been taught it. Were we supposed to pick it up by osmosis? I apparently did, but I don't always know why something is right or wrong, it just feels it. Now journalists etc write rubbish and people think it's the right way....gone to the dogs, I say, gone to the dogs! Bah humbug! (Latest pet hate is less/fewer)

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