I normally try to avoid general ranting, but this really got my (nanny) goat.

Yesterday, this little "Christmas card" appeared with the post. As a taxpayer, I am contributing to this absolute nonsense, of which the Professor of the Bleeding Obvious would, no doubt, be proud.

Full of festive hints like not eating mince pies past their sell-by date, not letting gift vouchers expire (really!), and making sure your fairy lights have a CE mark. Never mind whether the darn things actually light up when you get them out of the attic - they were working when you put them away last year!

The finishing touch is the warning on the back:

Related links:

press release (word document) at http://www.consumerdirect.gov.uk

"Great action photo! Ok, the face has an unnatural red hue and the crop at the bottom is less than optimum... and the color of the water is not the rich blue one expects from a shot in the pool.. but having said all that, the action, the timing is so compelling that kudos for this shot are certainly in order." - photo critique on PhotoSIG.

I've seen this usage before and smiled then too! 'Kudos' is, of course, singular, and not the plural of 'kudo'. I also thought the quote is a good example of "damning with faint praise".

Related links:

PhotoSIG (warning: may offend as it includes adult content)

Kudos from the OED

Kudu from Wikipedia

The small ads in our local freesheets are always a treasury of typos - I imagine a lot of them are read out over the phone or written on scraps of paper, then transcribed. There was a real jewel in last month's Marshwood Vale magazine: "Nikon Fez camera with F4 zoom lens".

(I have an FE myself, and happen to know there's an FE2, so it's an easy mistake to make, I guess.)

'Within three or four days, the first "radical" root appears. When this is about 5cm (2in) long, transfer the seed to the pre-warmed compost. Don't bury it, but put it on the surface, standing upright, with its roots going straight down. Put it in bright light in a protected place indoors' - Sarah Raven, writing in the Daily Telegraph gardening section, 28/10/06

She might well use inverted commas! As any botanist knows, the thing is called a radicle. Such lack of knowledge is rather shameful in a professional horticulturalist: unless of course she dictates her copy and can't be bothered to proof read it afterwards. In either case, rather shabby! Another neat illustration of the fact that a spellchecker (or audio typist) can't necessarily be relied on to tell homophones apart. (And a lament for the sub-editor.)

Related links:

Homophones, homographs and homonyms at Wikipedia

Growing giant pumpkins

... as Homer might say.

Yesterday (in a moment of madness), I visited Tesco's in Axminster to do the week's shopping. A sign at the entrance informed me that the fresh produce was reorganised, and they'd very kindly provided a map of the new layout in case I couldn't find the carrots. I was amused to see that one of the new sections was called "Ambient Salad" - no doubt a term that means a lot to the B Ark personnel who study retail science or whatever it's called - but entirely meaningless to the person to whom the notice was directed: the ordinary shopper.

Moral: don't use jargon that your intended audience will not understand. A particularly apposite one, given that today a survey was published, which reveals that managers who use jargon are distrusted by their staff.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/6118828.stm

(In case you are interested, ambient salad looks very like lettuces!)