Posts tagged as:

English

You Could NOT Care Less

Tuesday January 26, 2010

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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Whether or Not

Sunday August 10, 2008

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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Wonderful Phrases

Thursday July 31, 2008

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

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Gay Marriage

Thursday June 12, 2008

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.

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Chinese Instructions, Part 2

Friday March 2, 2007

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 [...]

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Grammar Matters (Still)

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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Grammar Matters (Again)

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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Chinese Instructions

Friday December 1, 2006

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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The Commonly Confused Words Test

Monday March 28, 2005

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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Typing Monkeys

Saturday May 10, 2003

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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