#FridayFive: Favorite Adverbs July 23rd, 2010 @ 6:14 am PDT
Read the Friday Five …You Could NOT Care Less January 26th, 2010 @ 6:51 am PST
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 care. Someone […]
Whether or Not August 10th, 2008 @ 1:32 am PDT
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?
Not That Furmaliar February 11th, 2008 @ 6:43 am PST
To the political analyst who discussed Obama’s campaign this morning on NPR: I’m sorry to say that you lost whatever shred of credibility you had the moment you said that something was furmaliar. Nothing is furmaliar. Lots and lots of things are familiar. There is no r in the middle of that word. It’s not […]
Chinese Instructions, Part 2 March 2nd, 2007 @ 10:24 am PST
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 bit of the writing […]
Grammar Matters (Still) February 15th, 2007 @ 7:37 pm PST
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 like that. Apparently grammar […]
Grammar Matters (Again) January 17th, 2007 @ 6:06 am PST
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. I’m sure that […]
Grammar Matters February 27th, 2003 @ 5:49 pm PST
The “plural apostrophe” (e.g. no dog’s allowed, sofa’s for sale, UGH) is running rampant these days, and it’s not just my imagination. It’s so wrong that I can’t even begin to fathom how anyone could make such a mistake. I hate it when people dismiss it with, “Oh, not everyone’s a grammar freak.” Grammar? You […]
Impact the Itch April 23rd, 2002 @ 10:33 am PDT
Someone commented on my mini-rant that the words “itch” and “impact” are not verbs. The reader seemed to suggest that the appearance of these words in “a dictionary” as verbs is a viable argument for them being accepted that way. My reply: There are many words in “the dictionary” that are not words. You cannot […]
Ending Lists March 12th, 2002 @ 11:36 am PST
On list groupings and the correct use of commas Why does it seem that nobody knows the correct way to end a comma-delimited list? Did they stop teaching this after 1980 or something? Let’s review, shall we? First let me explain the philosophy upon which the correct use of “commas in lists” rests. It’s another […]
