The message
from jane contains these words:

'Compare to' instead of 'compare with' bugs me almost as much as the
less/fewer mistake, and the use of snuck for sneaked is just plain
irritating.

I'd agree with the 'compare to' hate, even though Willie said: "Shall I
compare thee to a summer's day?"

The past participle 'Snuck' is, like 'dove', a dialect or local
variation. or an affectation in the mouths of many.

I've just been reading around the websites linked to the Apostrophe
Protection Society and there's some interesting rules I wasn't aware
of. I need to read Eats, Shoots and Leaves again...

There were some comments on the use of ' I should of' rather than 'I
should have', when the short version is simply 'I should've' which of
course sounds like 'should of' and is therefore written incorrectly a
lot of the time.

The folk who do my work's publicity flyers annoy me too: they insist
that it is correct to say

Mr Bloggs said: 'I would like to thank...' instead of
Mr. Bloggs said, "I would like to thank..."

Well, they are more correct, if you can have degrees of correctness (an
absolute). The colon is correct, and you can argue amongst yourselves
about the quotation marks.

Argh! I've had quite an argument with them about the colon and the
quotes, and they still insist that in printing grammar, the colon is
correct. I've ended up almost screaming!

They're absolutely spot-on about the colon.

--
Rusty
horrid dot squeak snailything zetnet point co full-stop uk
http://www.users.zetnet.co.uk/hi-fi/