Check out the misspelling in this picture.

Andrew

Hi Andrew!

Well, that’s an unfortunate typo. That should be ‘sumptuous’!

Hang on, ‘sumptuous food’? Where is this? We’d like some!

I spotted this wrong spelling on a signboard at Sentosa. Shouldn’t it be ‘etiquette’ instead?

Jay

Hey Jay!

That looks like an unfortunate typo, Jay! Yes, it should be ‘etiquette’ instead of ‘etiguette’.
You should tell the people in charge of the facility!

In letter writing, is it rude to say ‘Dear Sir/Madam’?

I have been told that it can be considered rude to do so, but am not sure why.

Should I just stick to ‘Dear Sir’?

Jameson Lui

Hello Jameson Lui!

We don’t think that it’s rude at all to say ‘Dear Sir/Madam’ at a start of letter, Jameson Lui. Especially if we don’t know who we’re writing to!

Of course, if you happen to know that you’re writing to a ‘sir’ or a ‘madam’, then it would be rude to still start off with ‘Dear Sir/Madam’!

I took this picture at the NTUC outlet in Bedok South.

They have a typo in this offer tag.

Shouldn’t it be ‘FairPrice’? They’ve typed it as ‘Farirprice’.

Venus

Hello Venus!

Well, seeing how the chain of supermarkets is called ‘FairPrice’, we would agree with you!

You should let someone in the store know, Venus!

How many syllables are there in the word ‘Hephaestus’? Is it three or four?

Lit Twit

Hi Lit Twit!

Well, there are two ways to pronounce ‘Hephaestus’, Lit Twit, and they both contain only three syllables!

You can either say ‘hi-FES-tuhs’ or ‘hi-FEE-stuhs’, both with the stress on the second syllable!

Is it ‘woman is killed’ or ‘woman was killed’?

I think this Scottish paper has got it wrong.

The Daily Record one-off reader

Hi The Daily Record one-off reader!

Wow, you have quite a name.

We think ‘woman is killed in quad bike horror’ is pretty strange too. But we have a better correction for this. Just remove the ‘is’ and have ‘woman killed in quad bike horror’. That removes any case for confusion!

Maybe my English is not too good and I am wondering does the school only provide ‘an opportunity’ and is there such a word as ‘surest’?

Gary

Hello Gary!

We agree with you there, Gary. That should be ‘creating learning opportunities for everyone’ and not just one ‘opportunity’!

And yes there is such a word as ‘surest’, Gary. It’s the superlative form of the word ‘sure’!

Wouldn’t a simple ‘no football’ sound better?

It’s obvious that the problem here is people playing football.

I really don’t think they have an issue with random people carrying footballs around.

Just my two cents’ worth.

Solskjaer

Hi Solskjaer!

Yes, actually, ‘no football’ would be just fine! We guess sometimes people are afraid of being unclear.

If you want to be really clear, then you could say ‘no football allowed’!

Is there a link between the words umbra and penumbra?

The ‘pen’ prefix suggests to me that it’s somehow the penultimate stage before full-on umbra.
Does this sound plausible to you?

Vickers

Hi Vickers!

Yes, there is a link! The ‘pen-‘ prefix is actually the ‘pene-‘ prefix when it comes before a vowel. It is a prefix that means ‘almost’.

The words ‘umbra’ and ‘penumbra’ actually refer to different parts of a shadow, Vickers!

And as much as we’d love to explain it to you, we don’t have the scientific brains to do so. We suggest looking it up on the Internet or asking a science buff!

What’s a ‘taste good sandwich’?

This can’t be the right way to put it. I understand what they are saying, but it sounds strange.

Can you fix it, English Language Panel?

Bob the Builder

Hey Bob the Builder!

I know you’re expecting us to say it, Bob the Builder, so we will – can we fix it? Yes we can!

Now, with that out of the way…

We can’t really see the small print, and we think we’re grateful that we can’t. Because we can find mistakes already in what we can see!

We know what they’re trying to say too, Bob the Builder, but that isn’t correct English. That should instead be phrased as ‘good-tasting sandwich’ and ‘good-tasting soup’. Or even better, ‘delicious sandwich’ and ‘delicious soup’!

The other thing that we can see is wrong is the line below the pictures, Bob the Builder! That should be ‘all this goodness…’ because we’re talking about the single quality ‘goodness’. So ‘these’ is wrong!

Now we’re feeling hungry, Bob the Builder. Can you fix it?