8th grade education

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Originally Posted by jimbur

Talking from absolute ignorance on NZ wildlife - native or imported - Jock. Definitely would have failed 8th grade there.:B
Saw a programme on how NZ had had a terrible problem with African Boxthorn. Apparently it had been popular with farmers as it grew quickly into hedges and was impenetrable without heavy machinery.
Cheers,
Jim

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We are two very large islands here , and many smaller ones .:U
What area was the program talking about ?

And out of curiosity , who made the program ?

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Originally Posted by Manuka Jock

We are two very large islands here , and many smaller ones .:U
What area was the program talking about ?

And out of curiosity , who made the program ?

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Pretty insular here - most of us forget Tasmania.
I think the programme was a BBC2 production called Round the World in Eighty Gardens narrated by Monty Don. I can 't be certain that that is where the boxthorn came up though. The following might help you place Monty Don anyway:

While travelling around New Zealand Monty followed the Forgotten World Highway. This highly memorable driving journey wriggles it way over four mountain saddles, through an eerie one-way tunnel and along a sinuour river gorge.

Originally built on colonial bridle paths it was formed in the late 19th century. History is one of the reasons to choose this route, but scenery is another big highlight.

By the way, African Boxthorn is a noxious weed here but when turned looks very similar to European box.
Cheers,
Jim

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Originally Posted by jimbur

Pretty insular here - most of us forget Tasmania.
I think the programme was a BBC2 production called Round the World in Eighty Gardens narrated by Monty Don. I can 't be certain that that is where the boxthorn came up though. The following might help you place Monty Don anyway:

While travelling around New Zealand Monty followed the Forgotten World Highway. This highly memorable driving journey wriggles it way over four mountain saddles, through an eerie one-way tunnel and along a sinuour river gorge.

Originally built on colonial bridle paths it was formed in the late 19th century. History is one of the reasons to choose this route, but scenery is another big highlight.

By the way, African Boxthorn is a noxious weed here but when turned looks very similar to European box.
Cheers,
Jim

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So that BBC2 character based his program of New Zealand on a back country road that runs for a few miles through a very small hill region of one small province on one island off the coast of the mainland of this country ?
He is not too bright eh :D



I know that African boxthorn is a noxious weed in Australia . I have known that for many years .
I have eradicated a fair amount of it , in Taranaki (NZ) :U

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Originally Posted by Carry Pine

The quote was:

Rule 1: the comma rule If you are joining independent clauses to write compound sentences, use a comma BEFORE 'and', 'but', 'for', 'nor', 'so', 'yet'. Example
 Petrol prices are rising daily, and many people are struggling to meet costs in their daily lives. Price increases may stimulate a search for a cheaper alternative, but this does not always happen.

This is very interesting as students in NSW would be marked down for doing this.

Thanks for the link .

CP

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Interesting indeed. I vividly remember having a polite but pointed row about this with the person pretending to teach me English when I arrived here in 1978. I would accept "so" and "yet" as one word parenthetic clauses, that is with a comma before and one after, never a comma before any of the words mentioned if it is not the beginning or the end of a parenthetic clause. To the best of my knowledge, however, English usage tolerates a comma before the "and" introducing the last element of a list. For me, the examples above are plainly wrong. If the correlation is meant to convey causation, "and" should be replaced with "therefore", otherwise the comma before it should be removed.

So, what's the verdict?

I tend to punctuate English as I'd speak it.....if a pause is in order then so too is an apostrophe.

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Originally Posted by kiwigeo

I tend to punctuate English as I'd speak it.....if a pause is in order then so too is an apostrophe.

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... why did you use an ellipsis, then? :D

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Originally Posted by Frank&Earnest

... why did you use an ellipsis, then? :D

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The full stop key on my keyboard is sticky :D

Frank and Ernest,

I think we all know the English is 90+% convention. That is, what is said , goes. It's irritating for those of a previous generation and for those who believe in absolutes. Spelling just goes with (wif) the flow.
Re the marking of exam papers that I mentioned BST and NAPLAN. A classic case is in the marking scale for Narrative writing. Under the old NSW testing program (BST) we had a marking scale and you could teach the kids to write to a formula. A moderator probably devised that marking scale! (Well we often wondered who did!) And it was right and no one could argue. That is until the Commonwealth took over the testing program (NAPLAN) and there was a different marking scale. This one included marks for 'engaging the reader'. Sounds fair enough. Who wants to read crap in a narrative even if the grammar is all correct. And what's worse is: there is no one way to engage a reader. So suddenly the rules of writing narratives have changed. (Sentences don't need full stops either).
Why am I saying all this? That's right, there was discussion about commas apostrophes and so on. We may get upset when we see the signs ' Fish and Chip's' but in 50 years no one will care or even remember.
Give them a sentence and ask them to put in the punctuation- you wish!

Graham

I am sure nobody cares even now, why wait 50 years? :D

My question, given that it is all about convention as you agree it is, was only whether anybody could provide a reliable assessment of where the convention sits in 2010.

You seem to accept that nobody cares enough about that either, therefore everybody can pass ignorance as openness of mind.

BTW, I'm earnest but do not have a multiple personality disorder.:U

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A moderator probably devised that marking scale! (Well we often wondered who did!)

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Ah well, it should work well then. :kickcan: :whistling2:

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Originally Posted by

Ah well, it should work well then. :kickcan: :whistling2:

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It did work well. But a different government took over the tests. Then the rules changed.
I'm going to stop now.

Graham