Take the BBC quiz to find out if you really know your : from your ;

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/magazine/3256388.stm

Which reminds me of a quote from Red Dwarf:

Rimmer: After intensive investigation, comma, of the markings on the alien pod, comma, it has become clear, comma, to me, comma, that we are dealing, comma, with a species of awesome intellect, colon.
Holly: Good. Perhaps they might be able to give you a hand with your punctuation.


EDIT: I got 6 correct.

I also got 6 correct. Disappointing.

I got 8. I missed the jonny question and the :- question, and i got lucky when i guessed on the shakespeare one.

And Donald Rumsfeld has won the annual Foot in Mouth award for this lovely sentence:

"Reports that say something hasn't happened are always interesting to me, because as we know, there are known knowns; there are things we know we know. We also know there are known unknowns; that is to say we know there are some things we do not know. But there are also unknown unknowns -- the ones we don't know we don't know."

John Lister, spokesman for the campaign which strives to have public information delivered in clear, straightforward English, said: "We think we know what he means. But we don't know if we really know."

I got 8 right, but I take issue with the other two. I actually got #4 right if going by US convention, which is how I was taught. I dispute the answer to #2. There are only 10 uses of punctuation in the sentence. How can there be 12 errors? Do the " count as 2 each? If they do, I'd still say that each time they are missing is one distinct error, rather than two. Are they counting capitalization?

note: the above post was not checked for punctuation, and may contain egregious uses of it.

Are they counting capitalization?

That's the only way I can get to twelve.

I got seven; didn't know ":-" means screaming.

I got six correct.

I got hit by the US English (is that an oxymoron?) problem with #4. But somehow I just can't count the trivia question (#1 on the OED) nor the English Lit question (#6 on Shakespeare) as truly qualifying as grammar, and slang (#8) definately doesn't count.

-jk

I got seven correct. I think the emoticon question was unfair.

The real question is...

Who's going to be the bookie for taking bets on Bitt's score?

Okay, let's do a poll instead:

How many questions will Bitt get right?
Fewer than six
Six
Seven
Eight
Nine
Ten

Try these

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/magazine/3256770.stm

6.

I got six, according to them, but I have issues with some of the questions. There's no way that #2 is correct. Capitalization does not equal punctuation, nor are doublequotes two separate quotes. In fact, only I answered #4 using US convention. I eschew l33t-5p33k, so I missed #8. I misunderstood #1; when they mentioned brackets, I thought they wanted us to include brackets -- [] -- braces -- {} -- and parentheses -- (). I also included both quotes and double quotes. And, I'm sorry, capitalization is simply not punctuation, despite what the OED might say. (I've not looked.)

Heh, the poll shows "six" at zero. Nobody wins.

Nobody wins.

Only due to the fact that our local grammar hero knows more than the testers . . .

Good point.

He'll get 11, of course.

It was a grammar quiz, not a math quiz.

9 - piece of cake. All seem correct in normal, proper, 'British' English, although I really didn't know about the final full stop going outside the quotes. We certainly never got taught that at school.

All seem correct in normal, proper, 'British' English, although I really didn't know about the final full stop going outside the quotes. We certainly never got taught that at school.

Bein' on the otherside of the pond, that's what we were always taught. I got 6, 8 because of the full-stop issue... It thought I was British.

Me.

I consider my score of 6 a victory, since I missed the same ones as Bitt for more or less the same reasons he cites....