On Friday, 21 August 2015 11:36:22 UTC+1, Malcolm Ogilvie wrote:
On Fri, 21 Aug 2015 10:23:15 +0100, John Hall wrote:

In message ,
xmetman writes
I thought when I looked at the temperature of 17.5°C here this morning
as I got up I thought that here in the SW we would be the warmest place
in the British Isles but no, most places even northern Scotland are in
the range 16-18°C, not surprising really when most of us are sat in a
broad warm sector. It's strange that Carole would say that we are sat
between two weather fronts on this mornings forecast rather than use
the phrase 'warm sector', she obviously thought that it was far too
technical a term for the general viewer to understand.

If she really said "we are sat" rather than "we are sitting" then I
suppose it's not that surprising, but just another sad reminder that for
some reason the more grammatical "we are sitting" seems to be falling
into disuse. I inwardly wince every time I hear someone on radio or TV
say "I was sat" or "I was stood", which means that I wince an awful lot.

Sorry for the rant, but it's a particular bugbear of mine.

I earn money correcting people's written English but accept that our language is
constantly evolving and a sentence or phrase that once upon a time was deemed
ungrammatical is now accepted as "common usage", however much it might make one wince!
There's an excellent weekly column in The Times by Oliver Kamm (writing as "The Pedant")
who regularly demolishes some of my cherished beliefs. Recently, he argued very cogently
that those who complain when people write or say "less" when they mean "fewer" should
cease doing so! Both words have a long pedigree and the belief that one is "right" and the
other "wrong" cannot be sustained.

Malcolm

UKSW never fails to amaze me. What I was trying to draw attention to was that although there is a very well established meteorological term for the area between a warm and cold front she didn't use it! I can't remember precisely how she phrased it, other than the fact that she didn't use the term 'warm sector' and that was the whole point of me posting it!