English grammar

English grammar graffitiIn France, schools tend to teach French grammar and language right through to the end of secondary school. It’s a complicated language so this doesn’t surprise me. What has surprised me is seeing this advertisement for a duty free shop in England with graffiti to correct the poor grammar. Actually, the Oxford Dictionary says “compared to” is interchangeable these days, but even my boss is a stickler for “compared with”, and at least one other person agrees with him.

Whilst most graffiti writers struggle to spell correctly (as pointed out by Crap Graffiti), here we have the opposite: someone angry that the rule of grammar they probably learnt at school has not been adhered to. So, big points to the English(?) person who made this correction, whether the Oxford Dictionary agrees with you or not.

About

I'm a technical author, journalist and writer from Australia who has been living in Europe since 2000 and exploring the world from there. My passions are writing, snow sports and travel.

4 Comments on “English grammar

  1. Hooray from this ESL teacher! I love seeing things like that (even if I’m pretty sure I would say “compared to” myself!)

  2. What you say and what you know to be correct are often two different things! My pet is with ‘If I were in LA/ a rich man’ rather than ‘If I was….’ Singing along is always fraught with getting the correction in louder than the artiste. Yes, I know.. get a life!

  3. Emily, I only learnt that one recently myself: who knows how many others are out there that I say totally unaware! And Lesley, that’s a pet hate of mine too. We can stand in the queue for a life together at least. 🙂

  4. I find grammar so confusing these days. A lot of what I thought was correct turns out to be only crrect in either English or American English but not both.