Skateboarders
I have decided to develop a hatred of skateboarders. I dunno why really, I just figure everyone should have a hobby. Seriously though, while the little kids who hang around in carparks and fall over repeatedly are at least amusing, the skateboarders who zoom past you are just irritating. Frankly, I would not want to go at that speed if I looked that stupid, so why do they always look so smug? As if somehow everyone is jealous of their ludicrous mode of transport. Get a bike! At least you'd be exercising! Also, they dress funny. And do drugs and stuff.A battery can either be something that you use to power your toothbrush, torch or vibrator (its ok, I don't own an electric toothbrush! Thats just silly), or it can be a description for a collection of artillery. How exactly did that come about? I wouldn't consider the two things to be very similar. I suppose this is true of most collective nouns, they seem to have been picked pretty arbitarily, but generally the word at least means a grouping. Actually, I think you can have a battery of questions. Maybe it comes from "battering"? So what about the electrical power source then, as that seems to have come second from my completely misinformed and hypothetical conversation?
I'm going to talk about something related now. The tricky question of what do you do if you ask a question early in a conversation but then you digress and end with something that isn't actually a question but it still is a question? Do you put the question mark on, or do you leave it, assuming that people can work it out? I don't know, and managed to mess up on that last sentence so it didn't ramble, which is a shame. Anyway, whats the answer? Gramatically speaking, that is?
posted by Mr K @ 5:32 pm
3 Comments:
I think that if you use any of the words how,what,where,who,when or why at the beginning of a sentence or after a comma that the sentence will end with a question mark.
I hate skateboarders too. In the town where I went to undergrad, they all have unwashed, long hair and tiny, tiny brains. It does amuse me when they smash their crotches into a rail, though.
And a battery is, I think, some kind of compound structure. You wouldn't call one gun a battery, but two may be. And a true battery in the power source sense is supposed to have more than one cell. It's odd, however, that we call single cells (AA, AAA, D, C) batteries when in fact they are not (as a 9V is).
I think Kelly is right and that battery does mean a group, so a group of cells. It is actually incorrect to call a AAA cell a battery even though everyone does it. I'm surprised you weren't taught this for GCSE physics?
E.g. a cell phone rather than battery phone.
I do also find skateboarders irratating, but only because they're noisy buggers. Otherwise I don't really have any beef with them, unless they vandalise benches and whatnot. I'm also pretty sure you get excercise using a skateboard, probably more than you do riding a bike.
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