Posts tagged as:

language

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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How to Handle a Ducking iPhone

Thursday December 4, 2008

For some reason that makes little sense, Apple decided to not include one of the words I use most frequently in the iPhone’s internal dictionary. So if I ever send you a text message saying that something is, “ducking awesome,” or that you need to, “get the duck out,” that is why. A [...]

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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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WordPress Gunning-Fog Analysis PlugIn

Saturday March 31, 2007

A few weeks ago a friend of mine asked me to build a WordPress plugin to display a Gunning-Fog analysis on his blog. The math part was pretty easy stuff. I was having a borch of a time getting the plugin to count syllables, so I hunted through Google and found someone else [...]

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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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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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Latin for Everyone

Sunday April 10, 2005

I think I’m going to have to add some of these to my email sig. Catapultam habeo. Nisi pecuniam omnem mihi dabis, ad caput tuum saxum immane mittam! Because, you know, interdum feror cupidine partium magnarum Europe vincendarum.

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These are from a joke email circulating that purports to be “ANALOGIES & METAPHORS FOUND IN HIGH SCHOOL ESSAYS”. I highly doubt that these were actually culled from high school essays. The main reason I don’t believe it is because there is no point of reference. There is no notation or source. [...]

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