I can’t stand when people say, “I could care less.”
“I could care less,” is one of those little things that drives me absolutely batshit crazy. If you could care less, it means you care. That’s not what you mean when you say that, is it? What you mean is that you don’t [...]
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English,
grammar,
language,
phrases,
rants
The words or not never follow the word whether. That’s it. That’s the rule. Whether implies or not. You don’t ever need to say both of them. The words or not should never be spoken. (They should certainly never be written.) Whether implies “or not”. Get it?
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English,
grammar,
language,
rants,
speech,
words
Five Wonderful Phrases That I Resolve to Use More Frequently in Conversation
soup to nuts
by hook or by crook
ass-over-teakettle
dollars to doughnuts
tits up
Tagged as:
English,
language,
lists,
words
There was a story this morning about gay marriage on LA’s 89.3 KPCC. I was infinitely more offended by the fact that reporter Kelly Wilkinson pronounced the word “rural” as “rurl” and the word “unfamiliar” as “unfermiliar” than I was about any part of the gay rights argument.
Tagged as:
English,
homosexuality,
language,
News,
pronunciation,
radio,
speech
I got a new insulated coffee mug a few days ago. There was a little slip of paper inside it with “instructions”. This is a coffee mug. It’s very nice and this morning it did an excellent job of keeping my coffee hot while I drove to the office. Here’s a [...]
Tagged as:
Chinese instructions,
coffee,
English,
grammar
Thursday February 15, 2007
Recently I saw a commercial for Sylvan Learning Centers. This is a company that is selling products to help your children do well in school. The ad showed a teenage girl gabbing on the telephone. The voice-over said, “Sally sure can talk fast. We can help her read fast,” or something [...]
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adverbs,
English,
grammar,
language,
rants,
speech
Wednesday January 17, 2007
Last night I writhed in agony while watching the 11 o’clock news. The local NBC affiliate was running a story about the Sacramento disc jockeys that were fired recently. (The radio personalities had sponsored a contest which led to the death of a woman.) Behind the anchorman the screen displayed DJ’s Fired. [...]
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apostrophe,
English,
grammar,
rant
After several years of mostly neglecting my Flickr account, I have finally started uploading the tons and tons of photos I’ve taken. Flickr is — if you can stomach the missing “e” — an incredibly cool site. Everything is intuitive and as far as I can tell, they haven’t done anything “wrong” anywhere. [...]
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cell phone,
digital cameras,
disclaimers,
English,
language
Amazing! According to this test I am an English Genius. It was not a surprise to see that I scored a perfect 100%, actually, on the advanced sections. What was shocking was that I scored in the embarrassingly-low 80s on what were supposed to be the simple sections. That, and the [...]
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English,
games,
tests
Give an infinite number of monkeys an infinite number of typewriters, the theory goes, and they will eventually produce the works of Shakespeare.
Give six monkeys one computer for a month, and they will make a mess.
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English,
language,
monkeys,
Shakespeare,
writing