First a confession: I'm one of them. Yes, a pedant.

Even on the street, signs with misplaced apostrophes, pompous instructions or unnecessary words can fill me with a burning need to share - to tell the world.

I've learned two things all pendants should know and I want to share them instead.

1. The world is not interested in hearing us corect its mistakes of punctuation, grammar or style. It isn't impressed that we happen to know that stuff and just thinks we don't get out much.

2. Our insistence on being 'correct' doesn't allow the language to breathe. English is rich and subtle. That's because it has survived through enormous changes in society. It has borrowed from other languages and we've generally allowed people to express themselves in colourful and inventive ways.

When people use expressions we don't like, turn nouns into unfamiliar verbs and slip in jargon or slang, they are reassuring us that English is still thriving.

Okay, our pulse rate goes up when we know it's not the way we were taught, but let's think of it as a small price to pay for a living language.

Let's just take a deep breath.