The BBC are really pissing me off with their use of abbreviations.

Here are some I have witnessed just this evening:

"Prof" instead of "Prof."
"Adm" instead of "Adm."
"Ch Insp" instead of "Ch. Insp."
"Nato" instead of "NATO"

Am I the only one who is really annoyed by this?

I rarely watch the BBC news now as I'm sick of the amateur dramatics and the silliness of two presenters doing just that, but the BBC website alone is rapidly going downhill, from bad cut and paste jobs to misspelling, grammatical errors, and now using terms and phrases more commonly associated with The Sun

I have to agree. I couldn't give a rats ass about spelling, punctuation and abreviations on a forum, afterall these are places where you have to try and get some personality across, but on an official broadcast or publication it's annoying. However, the BBC has gone down hill generally and is turning into a farce.

Mind you it's not just them, I opened up the saturday World Cup booklet in The Guardian where half way through it has a 'Guide to the World Cup Stadiums'...

Frickin' arrrgh!

The argument about "stadiums" is moot: it's an accepted plural in English, and I'm happy to use it.

I don't add full stops after contractions like Mr or Prof. I do it from habit because it was the preferred way of an old proof reader I used to work with. He disliked having full stops interrupting the flow of text all the time, and I agree with him.

In th'olden days, B.B.C. would have been full stopped, as would N.A.T.O. We would have P.C. Plod, Dr. De'Ath, etc. Yes, even etc., etc.

It makes for a lumpy passage of text in my opinion. I'm happy with BBC, NATO, PC, Dr, Prof, etc, etc.

What I do dislike is where a series of letters form a pronouncable word becomes a proper noun, Nato being a good example. It's not the North atlantic treaty organisation, is it? It's not Department for the environment, farming and rural affairs. I could go on.

Still, language evolves, I guess.

I must have missed that memo.

Edit: TBH I'm more bothered about things like 'Nato' rather than 'NATO' than whether it's 'Ch Insp' or 'Ch. Insp.'.

I don't object if you want to continue using "stadia". It's optional for the plural.

Oh, how gracious, you don't object to me using the correct form.

I used to fret about these things. Like I said, I was trained by a proper Fleet Street reader, and he was the strictest - boy, the arguments we used to have! My job is communication, and good written English is a definite requirement. However, I've come to realise the strength of English is its ability to adapt and evolve as a language. It's not preserved in aspic - the English of Chaucer, Shakespeare and even Victorian authors is quite a different animal to the English we use today - and I have to accept it will change even though I won't necessarily like it.

I'm even a bit more laid back about apostrophes, although they still make me wince and bite my lip in frustration when I see them abused.

Don't get me wrong, I've been one of the first in the queue on this, or any other, forum to argue against grammar Nazis. I think my issue lies more in feeling like the BBC, in particular the 24 hour news channel, is dumbing down the nation and I then see that extend to the use of language.

Like I said in another thread, on MasterChef calling someone a 'children's doctor', repeatedly, wound me up hugely. They couldn't bring themselves to call him a paediatrician.

That sort of thing is the route of my issues with language on the BBC.

I agree.

Root?

Stadiums is fine, as is octopuses, viruses, bonuses and penises. The only reason for using stadia, octopi or boni is if you wish to apply the rules of a parent language when incorporating a foreign word, and to make that an actual rule. If every word that we borrow must submit to this rule in perpetuity, then we must consider the plural forms of other imported words such as anorak, curry, and thousands of others which nobody here would know. We wouldn't do that though, because all the foreign grammatical structures which are considered correct in English are imported from Latin, this is arbitrary and therefore not valid as a rule.

Nato is wrong under any circumstance I can think of, but the rest are acceptable as an editorial choice, so long as they are applied systematically.

Nah, 'route', you often have to take a long journey to find where my issues come from.


We don't use 'octopi' as 'octopus' is Greek in origin, 'octopi' derives from a Latin form of the Greek form AFAIK. The direct Latin for octopus is 'polypus'.

Mind you the correct Greek would be 'octopodes'.

As a personal preference I also dislike hearing 'criteria' in place of a singular 'criterion'.

But then I'm fickle, I may change my mind in a day or two.

VIRII!!!!!!!!

Either way the beeb are slipping in general, was watching a clip from Jools Holland last night before the repeat of JR and the Arctic Monkey had the word 'scumbag' censored. This was after 1am...... WTF? It's not even a swear word!

No. Just no.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plural_of_virus#Virus

Seeing sites that use virii/viri instead of viruses

Really annoys my gf who does biomedical sciences too