That reminds me ...

[ChrisGreaves]

I must drag out one of the two vacumn cleaners and do my twice-yearly clean-up of the living-room floor.
Unless the rain stops and the sun comes out to play.
Cheers
Chris

[GeoffW]

Vacumn?

It has been spelt that way but isn't an accepted spelling as far as I can see.

[ChrisGreaves]

Vacumn? It has been spelt that way but isn't an accepted spelling as far as I can see.

Thank you Geoff! You spotted that well (so now I probably have to wipe up the spots ...)

My mind was absorbed by the vacumn of space, so much so that I had forgotten my Bertie Wooster's Jeeves who always pronounced it with three mellifluous syllables vac-u-um.

(signed) "Episode 122" of Bonavista

[BobH]

I thought it was called a hoover.

[HansV]

Hoover is a brand name, just like Frigidaire.

[BobH]

Yes, I know; but it is used by the Brits and I think the Aussies generically much as Americans call tissues kleenex.

[ChrisGreaves]

I thought it was called a hoover.

Bob, you and I went through this some five years ago, didn't we?
Hoover was one of your presidents.
Cheers
Chris

[ChrisGreaves]

Yes, I know; but it is used by the Brits and I think the Aussies generically much as Americans call tissues kleenex.

Kleenex might be only a tissue, but it's nothing to be sneezed at.
Cheers
Chris

[GeoffW]

Hoover is a brand name, just like Frigidaire.

A trademark which becomes a general term has become "genericized".

It's interesting the words which have become genericized . While I knew about Hoover, biro and sellotape for instance, I didn't know about heroin, kerosene and escalator.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of ... trademarks

[John Gray]

Surely they have been genericised...
</pedant>
You're welcome!

[LisaGreen]

Suck it up boys!

[ChrisGreaves]

Suck it up boys!

"boyz", surely? Liza?
Cheerz
Chriz

[HansV]

See Oxford spelling

[StuartR]

One publisher that I do a lot of work for uses Oxford spelling. It took me a while to get used to it.

[LisaGreen]

So do you use the oxford comma?

[StuartR]

I always used the Oxford comma

[BobH]

I never knew that kerosene was once a brand name, and I'm older than dirt (but apparently not as old as kerosene).

Sellotape in the US is scotch tape.

[BobH]

Chris, Hoover was way before my time. I hear you knew him personally.

[BobH]

Please . . . educate me once again on the Oxford comma. Is it specifically that the comma is not used before the word 'and' that ends a series? I was taught that commas separate nouns, or things functioning as nouns, in a series and is used before a concluding conjunction in a long list, meaning that eliding the comma is most common but optional. (I was also taught to use commas to separate a noun or phrase in apposition; see above.)

[HansV]

It's the other way round: the 'Oxford comma' specifies that you use a comma before the 'and' that ends a series:

Red, white, and blue.