On 11/10/14 20:55, William Ray Wing wrote: > On Oct 11, 2014, at 3:20 PM, Dennis Lee Bieber <wlfr...@ix.netcom.com> wrote: > >> On Sat, 11 Oct 2014 16:26:43 +0100, duncan smith <buzzard@invalid.invalid> >> declaimed the following: >> >> >>> The media have their own quirks when it comes to English. The BBC >>> regularly use "top of" / "bottom of" in the sense of "start of" / "end >>> of", but I don't know any British people who would (currently) use that >>> in conversation. (This only started a few years ago, and the first time >>> I heard it I had to work out what it meant from context.) >>> >> >> That usage I think is ancient... I'm sure I've heard it back when there >> was a reasonable BBC World Service (along with VOA, Radio Netherlands, and >> etc. running on Short Wave"... >> >> Top of the Hour… > > Of course, musicians have used it for years, as in “Take it from the top.” >
[snip] I think it must be a more recent thing with BBC (TV) presenters / newsreaders (I rarely listen to radio); or, at least, it has become a lot more common. I can see it makes perfect sense with e.g. sheet music. You start again at the top. It was the "top / bottom of the [TV] programme" that I didn't immediately get, because I was thinking of a timeline running left to right (perhaps rather than the script used by the presenters). Duncan -- https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
