Rhetorically Speaking 4: Similes

Similes are when you compare something or someone to something else. The idea being that you choose something to compare to which is renowned for the characteristic you want to describe. For example, you might describe a person, who is very tough, in this way:

He is as hard as nails
(Nails are by their very nature tough)

Image: Tom Curtis / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Many similes make reference to members of the animal kingdom

As stubborn as a mule (mules are characteristically stubborn)
He took to the task like a duck to water (water is the duck’s natural environment)
He was like a bear with a sore head (you might use this expression to describe someone with a bad hangover, bears are supposedly mean and grumpy, and one with a sore head even more so)

The examples so far have used like and as when making the comparison. Not all similes use this construction, here an example from Shakespeare’s writings:

Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day

When you want to say that something is distinctly lacking in a certain property or the opposite you might use an ironic simile:

It’s as clear a mud

Next week we’ll be looking at a related subject, metaphors.

One for the Road?

The English are very fond of their drink. If you plan on visiting Britain you might want to brush up on some drinking terminology, so that you can “fit in”, so to speak.

First choice to make is the choice of venue, usually at home or pub. Or more accurately where to start drinking, it’s not uncommon to start drinking at home, before going to the pub to get hammered, then on to a nightclub to get completely legless. Of course some people prefer to drink in the street, you can typically spot winos, with their drinks wrapped in brown paper bags drinking in public.

Drinks are commonly bought from the supermarket or a shop that specialises in selling alcohol known as the off-licence, or offy. You might buy some plonk (cheap wine) or maybe some alcopops (sweet-flavoured drinks popular with young people).

Image: Nicholas Tarling / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

You should try to arrive at the pub during happy hour, because there are often special promotions on drinks. In practice this may last longer than an hour, but when happy hour is nearly over it’s not uncommon for people to rush to the bar to get the cheap drinks. Don’t forget that the term bar is not only a name for a posh pub, but also the place where you queue to get your drinks. The person serving you is a barmaid if female and a barman (or bar steward) if male.

There are various levels of alcohol-induced intoxication, pick one before choosing your alcoholic drinks. There is tipsy (only slightly impaired), merry (happy because you’ve had some drink), getting blotto, pissed or shit-faced is usually reserved for those who don’t have jobs to go to in the morning.

If you are driving you will probably want to order a soft drink such as lemonade or cola. If you’re staying for a while you might order a refreshing shandy. This drink is half lemonade and half lager or beer of some description, usually served in a pint glass.

If you want to talk to members of the opposite sex you might need some dutch courage (bravery brought about by drinking alcohol). You might invite someone back to your place for a coffee (usually sex, but not always) or a nightcap (an alcoholic drink before bedtime). In the morning the person you took home might not be the supermodel you thought they were, in scientific circles this effect is known as beer goggles - people look more attractive the more you drink.

Drinks come in various sizes. Beer, cider and lager comes in pints (568ml) or half-pints (halves). The stronger drinks, spirits such as whisky or vodka (voddy), come in what is known as measures. Order a single, a double, a triple or higher. Ordering larger amounts than this is pointless, the bar staff will ignore your order and give you what they see fit, safe in the knowledge that you are too drunk to notice the difference.

Half an hour or so before the pub is about to close (technically known as chucking-out time) you will hear a bell, sounding last orders. This is your last chance to get a drink (or one for the road). When last orders are over, you’ll have a certain amount of drinking-up time, then the staff will be keen to get you out of the pub, shouting “Haven’t you got homes to go to?” and sighing loudly.

Somehow you will find your way home, regardless of how paralytic you are. You may wake up in the middle of the night with a telephone in one hand and a kebab in the other. Do not be alarmed, this is perfectly normal. In the morning you will swear “Never again!”. This resolve doesn’t last long usually and you may be tempted to have the hair of the dog (another alcholic drink in the morning supposed to cure a hangover).

I hope you have learnt some useful phrases and, as they say in the adverts, please drink responsibly.

Guide to Style Guides

Some of the better quality newspapers such as The Guardian and The Times provide style guides for the benefit of their journalists. The idea being that all the articles appearing in their publications should be consistent in terms of punctuation, spelling, capitalisation and use of language. The guides are usually made available to the public in book form and/or on the internet, such as The Times style book. If you’re into this sort of thing it can make for fascinating reading.

Image: Idea go / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Usually the style guide writers also advise on topical issues, such as how to spell Colonel Gaddafi’s surname out of the 32 or more possible options (strictly speaking it’s an alliteration of his name from the Libyan original).

Apart from useful guidance on where to place hyphens and suchlike the style guides often provide a list of “banned words”. This isn't often, contrary to what you might expect, a list of swear words and terms. Instead, it is something that the guardians of good writing practice find far more heinous, namely clichés, tautolgies and sensationalisms such as

Brutal murders - all murders are brutal so that word isn’t needed
Innocent victims - victims are by their very nature innocent
Jaw-dropping

The tone of these style guides can be quite amusing. For example, Americanisms are frowned upon and and so are seemingly politically correct terms such as chairperson. The word “toilet” is on the banned list too, this obviously has lower-class connotations, despite it being the word that you will see on the door of public toilets.

So, the higher quality press has style guides that aspire to keeping their journalistic standards high. Do the gutter press have style guides encouraging sensational headlines, stereotyping and stating the obvious. Do men's magazines provide guidance to their journalists on how to objectify women, relate their tales of excessive drinking and the best way to describe bodily functions. Maybe they do, but somehow I think these are the sort of guides less likely to be made available to the public.

Defending the Queen's English

What is it about American phrases and spellings that some Britons find so offensive?

Extremists (loyalists even?) might refer to British English as “The Queen’s English”.

You lazy Americans are distorting the language and thereby insulting the Queen. Our Queen! Treason! Off with their heads!

Why lazy? Does it really take all that extra effort to type the u in “colour”. Having said that, the addition of that letter u does little to help some of my countrymen pronounce the word correctly. All too often you will hear “culler”, which has an entirely different meaning.

There are occasions when British spellings win out. Take for example “meter” (a measuring device) and “metre” (a unit of distance). Here there is a useful distinction in spelling what are two essentially different, but related, words. Hang on, maybe it’s not so useful after all. Americans favour imperial measurements just as much as the British and will rarely measure distance in metres anyway (aside from the fact that the context will usually tell you what sort of meter we are talking about). The only difference being that the British occasionally get forced to use the metric system by those nasty bureaucrats in Brussels.

Other British objections to Americanisms are also arbitarily unreasonable . Take these two examples that follow a similar structure

Write me (surely that should be write to me?)
Call me (this is acceptable and call to me is a mistake you’ll often hear non-native English speakers make)

The differences between American and British English are relatively few considering the number of words in the English language. There are the obvious choices between words such as “sidewalk” and “pavement” or “elevator” and “lift”. American pronunciation is an area that causes a certain amount of consternation for me. Do I pronounce “schedule” as skedule or shedule? I honestly don’t know any more. I really do watch too many American films and sitcoms.

This is where the American z (zee to Americans, zed to everyone else) can come in useful.

Initializing (American spelling, the letter in pronounced as a z)
Initialising (British spelling, pronounced as a z, but written s, pure crazineness!)

Let’s not get carried away with this useful aid to pronunciation, otherwise it could have far-reaching rezults.

From reading the article so far you might think I am more in favo(u)r of American English than British English. Perhaps, but right now I’m in the United Kingdom, drinking tea and complaining about the weather and advocating the use of British English, original and best!

Rhetorically Speaking 3: Irony

In Search of Irony

A couple of books I’m reading at the moment have made references to “ironic t-shirts”. This got me to thinking, what exactly is an ironic t-shirt and for that matter, what exactly is irony.

It turns out that there are three main types of irony...

Verbal Irony

This is when you say something while implying something else. For example if there's a massive rainstorm outside and you say “What lovely weather we’re having!”. You are being ironic.

Dramatic Irony

When the readers or viewers are aware of a character’s situation and the characters themselves aren’t this is dramatic irony. In “Romeo and Juliet”, for example, Romeo is distraught because he thinks that Juliet is dead. He then kills himself. We as readers know that Juliet is not in fact dead, so that’s dramatic irony.

Situational Irony

Ah, my favourite type of irony. This is when a situation leads to results that would not normally be expected. Classic example

President Reagan was struck by a bullet that bounced off the presidential car. This is ironic because the car was bullet-proof (and probably bomb and missile proof too) and in normal circumstances would protect the president from bullets.

Irony in Popular Culture

In my quest for examples of irony I was led to popular culture and this sketch from Blackadder

Blackadder: Baldrick, have you no idea what irony is?
Baldrick: Yes, it's like goldy and bronzy only it's made out of iron.

Ok, this was just a simple play on words, but amusing nevertheless.

Apparently Americans “just don’t get irony”. Does this extend to Canadians too? Perhaps. You would think that Alanis Morissette’s song “Ironic” would be a great place to find some ironic scenarios. You’d be wrong. As Matt Sturge points out in this article most of what she mentions in the song is just bad luck/unfortunate timing:

Attempts at describing irony: 11
Successful attempts: 2.5

Irish comedian Ed Byrne showed he really knows what irony is all about: "The only ironic thing about that song is it's called 'Ironic' and it's written by a woman who doesn't know what irony is. That's quite ironic."

Anyway, back to those elusive ironic t-shirts. Ordinary t-shirts may turn out to be ironic if worn in the right situation. Take for example these ironic t-shirts to get arrested in. Strictly speaking artistic irony is when an artistic work refers back to earlier art.

My search for ironic t-shirts led me to this design, "Pop Art is Dead". Maybe this is the ultimate in ironic t-shirt design? The t-shirt is ironic in the artistic sense (referring to the pop art style) and situationally ironic (because it’s using pop art imagery while at the same time saying it’s dead). So it seems that not only is pop art still very much alive, but irony is helping to keep it that way.

Avoid common mistakes in English 3: Coming and Going

When talking about their travels and commuting I often hear non-native speakers of English incorrectly use coming when they should be using going. So, which is the right one to use?

This is where it gets slightly complicated, because it depends on factors such as

The place you’re going to
Where you are
Whether the person you’re speaking to is already at that place (or likely to be there)

Basically

You go to see people
People come to see you

So, if you’ve failed to arrive at work one day the boss might call or text you (remember here the place where you work is often just referred to as “work”)

“Are you coming in to work today?” (the boss is at work so you are coming to them)
Or, maybe, you are making a call to explain the situation
“I’m really ill, I won’t be coming in to work today”
(the choice of coming or going is from the perspective of the person you’re talking to, in this case the person who you are talking to is/will be at work, this even applies if you are leaving a message on an answering machine or talking to someone who won’t be going in to work until later)

Suppose you are talking to your friend (who isn’t connected to your workplace)

“I’m not going in to work today”
(In this case you might consider going to see your friend and say to them: “I can come and see you instead”)

Finally, you may have heard a few expressions relation to coming and/or going

“I don’t know whether I’m coming or going”.
You would use this expression if you were confused and had too many things to think about. The idea being that a very confused person wouldn’t be able to decide if they weren’t coming or going.
“I can’t keep up with his comings and goings”
Here comings and goings means general movements and activities.

Hopefully, now that you’re armed with that information, you’ll be able to correctly tell people whether you’re coming or going.

Rhetorically Speaking 2: Alliteration

Alliteration is the use of the two or more words in sequence that have the same sound in their first syllables. Take this example

The snake silently slithered

Here the ess sound is repeated three times. The repetition of sounds is very pleasing the to the human ear and sentences using alliteration take on a poetry-like nature. Made-up names for cartoon characters and comic-strip heroes often feature alliteration,

Micky Mouse, Donald Duck, Dan Dare.

Then there are film and pop star names, characters in novels and fictional places,

Ronald Reagan, Janet Jackson, Peter Pan, Heartbreak Hotel

Overuse of alliteration can often become cliched. An example of this is in what we shall politely call the lower-quality press. Headlines like “Fox Found on 72nd Floor” (taken from today’s Sun) aren’t too bad, they just got lucky (and so did the fox). However, all too often, headline writers go out of their way to use alliteration and the results can sound contrived, such as this example which manages to pack two alliterations into one headline, “Can this cute cat secretly sense death?” (also from today’s Sun).

Summing up, use alliterations sparingly. Sometimes they will happen naturally. Don’t give in to the temptation of using words you wouldn’t normally use (or aren’t entirely sure of) just for the sake of alliteration. This, my dear readers, is why this article isn’t titled “Awesome and Awful Alliterations”. For once I am practicing what I’m preaching.

Be Your Own Proofreader

A while back I was browsing the threads on my favourite internet forum. Some hapless fool had made the mistake of posting a thread advertising himself as a teacher of English. Needless to say, the post contained some mistakes, whether they were typos or not I can’t remember and this brought the usual guffaws from the forum regulars who have nothing better to do with their time. One of these guys posted this remark,

“Well, making those sort of mistakes won’t exactly install confidence in your pupils”

The phrase he was looking for was, of course, “instill confidence”. I discreetly PM’d the guy pointing out that he had used the wrong phrase so that he could nip in, make an edit and not make a fool of himself. Making mistakes in English when trying to ridicule someone is not a great strategy. I shouldn’t have bothered. The guy said that he was a proofreader and knew what he was talking about.

If I’d known about Brians' Errors at the time I could have pointed him in the direction of this page. Instead I told him to Google it (my apologies for using Google as a verb). Google is a very quick way of determining how popular a word is on web pages and hence in the real world. However, if you simply search Google for install confidence followed by instill confidence you might be fooled into thinking that installing confidence is a perfectly valid concept. The key here is to make sure that when searching Google for a phrase make sure you enclose the phrase in quotation marks, thus otherwise Google will search for the words in your phrase individually rather looking for the phrase as a whole.

Some people just don’t take criticism well, no matter how politely presented, and the guy refused point blank to believe that he could possibly wrong and said that he was too busy to argue the matter. Too busy badly proofreading texts in-between spouting nonsense on internet forums, no doubt.

These days there is an even better way of finding out how popular certain words and phrases are. Enter a word/phrase into Google’s Ngram Viewer and it searches its repository of over a million or so books and produces a nice graph of how often a word has been used in various books throughout the ages. You can even select which type of books you are searching from; “British English”, “American English”, “Fiction” etc. Fascinating stuff. For example, you can see that gaiety is steadily falling into disuse whereas facebook was non-existent before 1982.

We have online spell-checking these days and you can see errors underlined in red as you type. What you might not see underlined in red are the words that went astray when you rephrased your sentences. Reading your text out loud is a great way of finding errors. After you’ve finished reading it out loud pass it to a friend or colleague and get them to read it out loud too. Even then a few mistakes might slip through.

Remember to give criticism politely and accept it graciously. Acknowledge that there will always be people better educated than you (this might not apply to you Nobel Prize winners out there if you’re reading this). Also remember that just because something is in popular usage doesn’t mean it’s correct. Having said all that, hopefully there aren’t too many mistakes lurking in the articles I’ve written and if there are then I’m all too happy to have them pointed out to me. Now, I shall sit back and wait for the stream of emails to arrive...

The Importance of Spaces

You can’t see them, but you know they’re there. I’m talking about spaces. There are some pairs of words that can be used joined together as one word or kept separate with a space. The distinction can be very subtle or very marked. Here are some of the most common examples.


every day & everyday

I go to the gym every day
(Here every day is an adverb meaning on a daily basis).
I have a tuxedo for special events as well as my everyday suits for work
(Here everyday is an adjective that means ordinary, not special)
Going to the gym is an everyday occurence for me
(Here everyday is again used as an adjective, but this time literally meaning every day or pretty much every day anyway)

everyone & every one

Everyone deserves a treat now and again
(Everyone means all the people, everybody can often be substituted for everyone)
Make sure you check that every one of those envelopes has a signed cheque inside it
(We could have used all here, using the phrase every one emphasises that we definitely don’t want any missed out)

all together & altogether

I’m not altogether sure about the meaning of this word
(In this context altogether means completely or entirely, either of these words could be used instead)
I’ll do the presentation when we are all together in the same room
(All together means in the same place at the same time)

into/in to

Put the ice cream into the freezer
(Here into is used to emphasise the motion of putting something inside something else)
Governments rarely give in to ransom demands
Johnny handed his homework in to the teacher
(In these examples giving in and handing in are phrasal verbs so we need to put a space before to)

all right/alright

Alright is the less formal spelling of “all right” (more of a British-English thing)
How are you? I’m alright thanks (means I am ok, nothing much to complain about)
How was the film? It was alright (in this case it means passable, in the sense of it being average, nothing special)
Then there is the use of all right as two discrete words...
Make sure the figures are all right (i.e. correct) before you send the quotation to the customer.

all ready/already

I already ate (Already means you have done something, usually, but not always, in the recent past)
When you’re all ready I shall begin (Here all just means everyone present)

As is often the case in English if you’re not sure of something avoid using it. If a dictionary isn’t available for you to check something then you may well find a way of expressing what you want to say using words that you already know the meaning of.

Rhetorically Speaking 1: Rhetorical Questions

Welcome to the first part of a new series. I shall be following in the sandal-clad footsteps of no less than the great Aristotle with my up-to-date take on rhetoric - the art and study of the use of language with persuasive effect. Used sparingly rhetorical devices can make your writings and oration more compelling. Let's begin...

A rhetorical question is a question that is posed merely for effect. For example in Shakespeare’s Merchant of Venice, Shylock says:

“If you prick us, do we not bleed? If you tickle us, do we not laugh?”

This device is very commonly used by great orators. The aim is to make the listener actively think about what the speaker is saying. An answer is not expected, nor is one offered. This is fine if you are speaking, unless you’re doing stand-up comedy it’s unlikely that someone will chip in with an answer.

When you start asking rhetorical questions on social-networking sites, however, don’t be surprised when people start firing back answers at you. The mere act of putting a question mark at the end of a sentence invites an answer. Does it not?

Of course, if your rhetorical question is a plea for help such as “Why is my life so crap?” you’ll be glad to hear that there are people out there who do care if you live or die. Conversely, if your e-suicide-note is met with a stony silence you might regret asking that rhetorical question.

In everyday speech (and in everyday arguments) rhetorical questions are often asked.

What the hell is wrong with you?
How many times have I told you not to do that?

Unless you want the argument to escalate, it’s best not to answer these sorts of questions.

In summary, the rhetorical question is a useful tool. When writing it serves as a way of airing your musings and at the same time giving your reader pause for thought. When speaking in public it can serve to stop your audience falling asleep. This especially so if several are used in rapid succession and each question mark hammered home with a thump of the lectern in the manner of an Evangelist giving a sermon warning of fire, brimstone and eternal damnation. So, there you are. Why not give it a try?

The Lazy Man's Guide to Acronyms

It’s human nature to want to expend the minimum possible effort. Why say National Aeronautics and Space Administration when you can simply say NASA?

An acronym is usually formed by taking the first letters of the full form to create a new word. The NASA example of abbreviating is called initialism. It’s also possible to snatch a few extra letters and still form an acronym. RADAR = RAdio Distance And Ranging. Radar is an example an acronym has become so familiar that it has become a proper word, people don’t even bother capitalising it and relatively few people know what radar stands for.

Some acronyms are pronounced as words, such as our earlier NASA example, and some are spelt out letter by letter. Then there are examples combining the two approaches such as CD-ROM (cee-dee rom). Some acronyms may stand for more than one thing depending on the field of use. IRA (spelt out letter by letter is an Irish terrorist organisation) and IRA (pronounced as word eye-ra) is a tax-efficient savings scheme.


TLA’s

My first introduction to the world of TLA’s (Three Letter Abbreviations) was in the in the world of eighties computing. TLA’s were the In Thing (amongst the nerdy anyway) and were bandied about to keep non-technical users in the dark.

“I have upgraded your PSU, CPU, HDD and RAM”
“What about the motherboard?”
“I haven’t touched that, someone else will need to do that, I only do TLA’s”

There is little point in using acronyms unless people know what you’re talking about. Style guides advise that you should (unless it’s a very common example) let your readers know what the abbreviation stands for. After that you can feel free to use the acronym. I remember talking to some girl on IRC (internet relay chat) back in the early days of the internet. She typed in “ASL”. I promptly ended the conversation. How was I to know that she was asking my Age Sex and Location? I thought she was being abusive and calling me an a**hole.

Nowadays we have MSN messenger and phone texting. LOL is a much overused phrase. There are already keyboards available that allow us to type words like LOL with a single keystroke. No doubt, in time, PMSL will become a standard key on mobile phones.


Mnemonics

The colours of the rainbow? Easy..

Red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, violet.

How do I remember that? By means of a mnemonic (memory aid). At school I was taught two methods of remembering the initial letters of the colours.

Richard Of York Gave Battle In Vain - spelling out ROYGBIV
Or the letters can just as easily split that up into a person’s name of sorts Roy G. Biv

Redundancy

So accustomed are we to using acronyms that the meaning behind them is often pushed to the back of our minds and we add words that are already in the expanded form of the acronym.

PIN Number -> Personal Identification Number number
ATM Machine -> Automated Telling Machine machine
SIM card -> Subscriber Identity Module card

I hope you have enjoyed this particular lazy man’s guide to acronyms (LMGTA). So, from me, it’s TTFN (tata for now)

The definitive article?

A quick recap for those who don't know, indefinite articles in English are used when you are referring to an object in general (not a particular one). Here are some example of the indefinite articles a and an in use

I'm reading a book
I'm eating an apple

In English the word the is a definite article, use it when you are referring to something specific (sometimes something you have previously mentioned).

The book I'm reading is very interesting

Foreign learners often get confused over which ones to use. Or maybe in their native languages definite and indefinite articles aren't used and they simply omit them in speech. This can have the effect of making them sound rather abrupt/surly in conversation. To complicate matters further, there are occasions when it is quite correct to drop the articles.

I like reading books (no article needed here)

When talking about abstract concepts such as feelings the article is often dropped.

Love is a many-splendoured thing (here the a is the indefinite article attached to the word thing)
Hate is a destructive emotion
I can feel the love in the room (here we are talking about specific warm feelings in a specific room)

Sometimes the word "the" is emphasised slightly.

I met a great guy at the library, I think he may be the one.

(this implies that this person is the one that you want to spend the rest of your life with)

Mr Right turns into Mr Angry when he is having problems at work and confides in his girlfriend "My boss is driving me crazy, sometimes I want to hit him". Apart from advising him to go on an anger management course here are a couple of pieces of advice she may offer.

Violence is never the answer
Violence is never an answer 

The difference between these two is quite subtle. The first sort of implies that out of all the possible answers violence is one of the possible answers (albeit inadvisable). The second answer suggests that violence shouldn't even be included in the list of possible options.

You will often see definite articles used in sayings and idioms, e.g.

The pen is mightier than the sword

Consider the following (grammatically correct) alternatives

A pen is mightier than a sword
Pens are mightier than swords

The original version is best, we're talking metaphorically here. The pen is a symbol of language and rhetoric, the sword is a symbol of weapons and violence in general

Hopefully the examples I have given have helped to clarify the matter. Ultimately, practice makes perfect.

Mastering Negativity

Learners of English face a formidable task. Certain areas of the language seem to have very few rules that you can learn. Instead you have to memorise all of the various different exceptions. One of these areas is forming the negatives (opposites) of adjectives and adverbs. For those of you who aren't familiar with the term, adjectives are descriptive words and adverbs describe the manner in which an action takes place.

Sometimes it is ok (and occasionally preferable) to add the word 'not'.

I'm not hungry
The shop assistant was not at all helpful

Usually, though, the negative is formed by adding a prefix to the word for example someone who is not helpful is unhelpful. Unfotunately there are several prefixes to choose from, including “un”, “in”, “im”, “dis” and there aren't really any rules that you can use to choose the right one.

In Polish the negating prefix is most commonly "nie". Wygodny (comfortable) becomes niewygodny (uncomfortable) in the negative. Not all Polish words starting nie are negative forms of words. Take for example Niedziela (Sunday) and nietoperz (bat). The same is true in English, but to an even greater extent:

Something that is inflammable should be treated with more caution than something that is merely flammable
Indifferent is not the same as "not different"

Furthermore, there are words which seem to be negative forms of words, but you can't reverse their meaning by simply removing the prefix. Take, for example, inept (clumsy), there is no such word as "ept". The opposite of inept is skillful. So, there you are. Negating English adjectives and adverbs is just something that needs to be learnt on a case-by-case basis. Another one of the “joys” of the English language.

Misnomers

Misnomer is "an incorrect or unsuitable name or term for a person or thing". A classic example of this phenomenon is “koala bear”, in reality it’s not a bear.

In my everyday life I see less extreme, but more personally irksome, examples of misnomers. Why do people insist on using the word express when something is patently not. Microwaveable rice can be nuked in less than two minutes and quite deservedly earns the title express. Trains that travel in excess of 100mph and make relatively few stops also earn the express title. However, the Pizza Express restaurant that took 45 minutes to bring me my garlic bread in a relatively empty restaurant should have the word express immediately removed from their signage and simply be called "Pizza".

Tesco Express stores also vary greatly in terms of how quickly you get served. Similarly with express checkouts at supermarkets. Some supermarkets are aware of this fact and refer to these checkout lanes as "basket only". Others mark theirs with a sign saying something along the lines of "10 items or less". There is always someone who will have eleven or twelve items and spoil it for the rest of us. The pedantic amongst you will know that the correct phrase is "10 items or fewer". This is a grammatical sin not quite as grave as the so-called grocer's apostrophe (where the sign maker puts in apostrophes for no good reason, e.g.  "Cabbage's £1 each")

Mild confusion can arise from other descriptions. I am always disappointed by the term "All-day breakfast" when I find that it only takes me five to ten minutes to eat it. Ah, I see now, it is available all day.

One thing that always makes me chuckle is the sign "Family Butcher". Instead of visions of a family-friendly butcher I imagine a wild-eyed madman with a meat-cleaver chasing a family round their living room.

There are government bodies that exist solely to make sure that we are not misled by advertisers. They randomly sample boxes of cereals and weigh them to make sure we’re not being cheated and send burgers to laboratories to determine how much meat they really contain. Their concern for our welfare does not yet extend to borderline abuses of the word “express”. If a well-paid job arises for a pizza-delivery time-checker I’ll be first in the queue to apply.