Walaa Idris, in her popular blog, posted an article as advice for the blogger Darren Bridgeman.
Bad spelling and grammar are evident in all our blog posts. Walaa offered this really helpful advice:
My advice, as someone who knows how you feel, because I felt embarrassed whenever I misspelled words and made such obvious mistakes, but I found although some who correct me do it for their own self satisfaction, most truly care and just want to help me. Even though I continue to correct and pay extra attention to every word I type, still, I make many mistakes. Somehow I feel like the Ambassador of all the poor English speakers and writers and as such feel it is my duty to ask you to reconsider – so please rethink your decision.
Here is the text of a mythical blog post. There are at least 14 errors in it, identified in Simon Heffer’s “Strictly English” as common grammatical errors in the English language. It may be purchased from Amazon here.
Blog post by Troubleblogger
This week has been an extraordinary week in British politics. For example, one blogger has alleged that a Tory MP has left his wife for a woman, while she is fighting malignant melanoma.
Yesterday, there was a very interesting debate in the House of Commons on student finance. The excellent discussion demonstrated the problems of making policy in a Coalition government. The difficulties is probably compounded by the fact that Vince Cable is using data which is probably out-of-date. The thing is that none of the options for the future of student finance are credible.
Some of the options proposed to Lord Brown are inforgettable. To be fair, I would of thought that some of the options proposed would have seemed impressive to the Institute of Fiscal Studies. However, raising tuition fees is now a distinct possibility following the Browne Report. The problem is that Clegg said that he would not never go there.
In terms of feedback, the Labour Party must be feeling good. The concertos of criticism from Liberal Democrat voters were not nice to listen to. In a sense, it was if Miliband was trying to collapse a house of cards. Some commentators just got personal. For example, yesterday, some people, working for the Times especially, called Vince Cable ‘an ugly monster’, but this is perhaps tad unfair. I wonder what Andy Marr would have made of that?
It is difficult to know who came out of worst – Clegg or Cable. Some think it’s better if Cable had quitted his cabinet post, given his beliefs. Commentators wrote on Cable giving his speech whilst being transmitted on Sky.
There’ll be a debate on it: I don’t know if I’ll go. Under the circumstances, it should be interesting, don’t you think?
You can download the text of the blog post Blog poste.
Have a go at spotting the mistakes in them. Feel free to email your entries to Dr Shibley Rahman, management@lawandmedicine.co.uk
The winning entry will get a copy of this book, Iain Dale’s Guide to Political Blogging in the UK. with no expenses spared!
Alternatively, you can, again, buy it off Amazon UK.
Dr Shibley Rahman
Queen’s Scholar, BA (1st.), MA, MB, BChir, PhD, MRCP(UK), LLB(Hons.), FRSA
Director of Law and Medicine Limited
Member of the Fabian Society and Associate of the Institute of Directors
