Moving to UK

Easily fixed: kill-file yourself.

 

Not just the Merkans either.

Maybe we should ask Des to look after English for us?

Mind you, you're a bit out of order calling him a pedagogue 'cos that
was never proven.

 

Chambers, which you CAN trust, has the following entry - forum noun
(forums or (rare) fora).

So "fora" is rare but still correct.

Personally, I consider it an unnecessary affectation not to use
perfectly satisfactory English plurals when they're available, such as
"forums", but that's a matter of taste, not correctness.

 

The Older Gentleman was seen penning the following ode to ... whatever:

Not that surprising if you keep in mind that the intended audience
have a professional interest in what's going on abroad and only time
to read one newspaper, if that.

 

One also ought to remember that in som cases US spelling maintains the
form of the original English, and in other cases is utterly correct.

Aluminum/aluminium is a classic case of the latter, I believe.

Agree with you about "forums", mind. But that's not to say that "fora"
is an acceptable alernative. And the Romans would *not* have said
"forums".

 

I assume you meant to say "But "fora" is an acceptable alternative",
just for clarity here since it's an important point in front of our
learned friend, The French Professor.

 

You're right. I omitted a crucial "not". We're back to litotes again,
really.

 

"He knew all the tricks: dramatic irony, metaphor, pathos, puns, parody,
litotes and... satire."

 

"first shag in ages"

 

You still haven't said why you do it. I've still not seen a professionally
typeset manuscript that does it.

Well, excuse *me* for knowing a synonym.

 

Before she started posting.

 

< snip >

Of course, this being Usenet, one should instead use slashes for
/italics/, and save the underscores for _underlining_.

Classier newsreaders recognise this convention, and display the text
appropriately.

 

And, iirc, this is *bold*...

 

On Wed, 3 Dec 2003 07:18:58 +0000,

I thought most american spellings were based on older english versions
e.g. color.

 

His ability to construct, a killfile is, about as good as your ability
to, punctuate. And that's a fact.

 

Children! You're getting sand all over the carpet!

 

Who, incidently, has been comprehensively proved wrong and has
therefore absented himself from this part of the thread. I'm beginning
to see why you all consisder him to be such a twat.

 

Spelling was variable in them days.

IIRC, it wasn't until Dr. Johnson produced his dictionary that any of it
was really standardised. BICBW.

(And I bet he used "fora" as a plural, too)

Bill Bryson's book on the evolution of US and English English is
fascinating.

 

What on earth took you so long?

 

According to that nice Lord Bragg, Mr Webster spelled most of them
like that because he thought that the original way was silly, and said
so in his preface to his dictionary.

South Bank Show type thing, about a fortnight ago.