This sloppy language annoys me every time I read it.
Why has the expression ‘go private’ become an a... - Thyroid UK
Why has the expression ‘go private’ become an accepted expression to describe a decision to choose or access private healthcare
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Steni
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Oh dear I'm having flashbacks to Mrs Green, my Junior school teacher! She was a stickler for correct use of grammar. You couldn't leave the class and go to your parent(s) at home time, unless you could reply to a given question in perfect formal English. Say it wrong, you not only had to repeat it, but the next day you had to reply to two sentences. Cursive, spelling and punctuation had to be perfect too. She was one of the best teachers I ever had, she didn't care where we came from, she expected us to reach her standards.
I still occasionally think of her, she is probably long dead as she was old then. Her teaching set me up well for secondary school, which was unfortunately a very underperforming school, and if you didn't have a firm foundation in the basics of the three R's you weren't getting it there either.
I daresay she'd be horrified with my speaking and writing now😬
So what is the correct form to describe 'going private?'
😂 well in my opinion the sentence should be ‘ I decided to see a Private doctor , or we ‘went privately ‘ to see a doctor - I think it’s because so many people are now using private doctors that colloquial language has become the norm. Similar effects are seen when people describe University as Uni !
I’m just old fashioned 😂
😂
Don't get me started! I think I'm old fashioned too, but the irritation manifests itself in different areas. I mean why don't girls wear slips and petticoats anymore? I actually find myself tutting when I see a visible knicker line, especially if the offender is a newsreader or TV presenter! Miserable is what I've become, despite avowing to myself as a young twenty-something that I would avoid the trap. But there's surely no need for it!
But to return to the subject of grammar, I remember an occasion years ago walking hurriedly to the station with my young son in tow, and I bent down and said 'we need to walk faster to the train station or we'll miss the train!'
A random man on the corner literally shouted in annoyance at my back, 'Railway station!' it's not a b*****y train station' 😂
I stand duly corrected🎓 The sentence sounds very pretty in your example, I must admit.
I agree that the term 'Uni' is almost unforgivable.
I’ve just read it back and I have to say it really does sound pretty - thanks for engaging with this somewhat petty issue of mine - I feel better for getting if off my chest 😂
Ha ha! Glad to be of help!
But, tying this back to thyroid disease, one of the hobbies that went out the door after years of no hypothyroidism treatment was reading. I was a science fiction, fantasy and historical fiction buff, but increasingly poor concentration ability and being stuck re-reading the same sentence twenty times due to brain fog, meant I stopped reading big books, and would instead just grab magazines...you could graze them quickly and they were light and fluffy with no deep thinking or hard concentration required, but they are not good for reinforcing a good standard of written English, or widening one's vocabulary for that matter. I think I have read one book from end to end in the past 10 years. I tried to read Little Women the other day (I still have a childhood copy) and after a few pages it started to feel hard-going, despite it being an easy read, so I stopped, but am determined to commit to at least a couple pages a day.
The immediacy of internet reading doesn't help and I think I really need to cut back on technology use.
Me too - I was a voracious reader until my phone ( again the culprit ) robbed me of the joy of a slow pleasure - I am ADDICTED to an ever changing screen and stupid bite sized pieces of information which I am persuaded to believe I need - when quite clearly I don’t . A point proven by the fact that I can remember barely a word of it , whilst I can remember almost all of the hundreds of boos that I have read.
Don't you think this crept in when the previously known as 'colleges' became 'Uni's' to set them apart from the original real Universities.... it's like a watered down version 🤷♀️
Yes, I think you're probably right, hence we have Metropolitan uni, etc.
I admit to using this term and being a perpetrator thereof 😬💀
Evolution of the English language!!
Shame how ‘evolution’ always comes at the detriment of correct language -
It is perhaps worth remembering that there are people on this forum who are very unwell and who may be struggling to string a sentence together as they try to explain how they feel.
I understand that situation....been there!
Discussing thyroid issues in an informal way is the raison d'être of this forum
It seems inappropriate, therefore, to refer to the use of "sloppy language".
(Like you I detest the use of "uni" but that's another debate!)
Worrying about presenting concerns in perfect English may upset some people...it should not.
Surely so long as people understand one another in general conversation then stilted, formal English is unnecessary.
My apologies ( to everyone) if this appears critical but it comes from a 78 year old who some may say is "well educated " and who recently decided to " go private" for an operation.....and who happily uses "sloppy language" at times.
Please can we stick with thyroid issues here and leave an English MasterClass aside while many of us continue to "go private" to have blood tests carried out or to seek medical care in order improve our health.
I used to get annoyed at you're vs your, until i got severe b12 deficiency and lost the ability to differentiate them. To/too/two and write/right were very tricky as well.
Now I'm just happy people have the presence of mind, capacity, and energy to find their way to these forums.
Truthfully my objection isn’t to the sloppiness or otherwise of the expression it’s that the lack of familiarity with the experience makes people invent a term for it instead of sticking to what it has always been called .
I think this probably took off with the introduction of mobile phones and text messaging. Limited characters in text messages meant people had to be inventive and find ways to shorten their sentences. Use as few words as you possibly can to convey your message and invent new abbreviations too IYSWIM 😉
But now we don’t need to do that - phone keyboards are just the same as computer keyboards - I have a couple of friends who seem to think them selves ‘cool’ by continuing to use abbreviations in their texts long after the need to has disappeared .
Old habits die hard. And so many young people speak incredibly fast too.
Maybe , I’m writing from my phone now - writing pretty fast and using whole words though. It’s just the same a writing a letter or an email 🤷♀️
Perhaps not everyone has phones with large enough keyboards for their fingers. Good manual dexterity isn't gifted to everyone from birth.
Oh yes of course I hadn't thought of that - if one is a using a small keyboard from an old phone it would be very difficult. The functions of a ‘phone’ are so various and vital to many people that referring to them as phones is really a misnomer. Photograph albums, diaries, holders of work documents , social media connectors etc etc has meant that keyboards have to be accessible. I run a business and without the ability to communicate properly though what is really a mobile computer I would be lost.
helvellaAdministrator
My feeling is that the de-adverbialisation of the proper use of directly into indiscriminate and near-universal use of direct has been a major part of this. Though whether it was a symptom of changes which were already occurring, or a cause of wider changes, is less clear.
The financial sector loved dropping "direct" into every advert, many company and service names and documents. This started years before internet banking.
(My spelling checker is balking at "de-adverbialisation". Though do note that it is not a magician's assistant spell checker. 
)
Helvella, are you related to Mrs Green?
Please give an example, goodness, I am now googling de-adverbialisation.
Absolutely! You are spot on and what a great word deadverbialisation is !
Without a hyphen, I included one to help with seeing the unfamiliar word but don't think it should have one, has just done something I though close to impossible.
In days past, a googlewhack was a search term which produced just one link.
I just got an almost-DuckDuckGowhack!
The sole instance I found was on a Russian site. But they were both links to the same single article - an entry list of articles and the index to that list or something like that).
Slightly lost now … ( three dots only note !)
Does this help? Or does it make it much worse?
Screenshot of a DuckDuckGo search showing two hits but both to same article.
It is what I understood - the thing I was confused over was the Duck reference 😂
It is a search engine which many people use instead of, say, Google or Bing.
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