Pedantry rules, is that all right with you?

Thanks to Lynne Truss and others more attention is being given to punctuation and spelling. Syntax even gets a look in. So this is for the forgotten triplet, semantics.

So many times have I seen the wrong one from "principal" and "principle" selected that I have to check myself every time. The most amusing (?) example was on a letter from the General Teachers' Council (great was the rejoicing when the NASUWT finally got the apostrophe in the right place in that one, forgive the tangent) to a principal, with the wrong word used in the address line. Wish I'd kept a copy.

More usually though it's a word or phrase with the wrong meaning. "Catch-22" is not the same as a "no-win situation" but you'd certainly think so from its usual usage. "Enormity" - even on the BBC news - where the word is "magnitude" or even "enormousness" (yes you can create words in a living language). A tsunami is not an enormity as it is not an evil act. And others have spoken about that flipping woman and her "ironic" song so we won't go on about it here. Actually I guess you can sing it ironically.

There is however one TV detective who attempts to use language correctly. Sadly it is not Inspector Linley who completely gratuitously and totally erroneously just said "beg the question".

Bring back Mayo!