It's Like, you know, English and stuff
Commentaries and gripes on writing, grammar, that sort of thing
Now relegated to Blogblivion...Monday, April 11, 2005
Overheard In Our House
"He wants to be a disemheaded body!”
Friday, March 04, 2005
I Speke Gudder
Via Jen, I just took the Commonly Confused Words Test. It’s rather interesting, and not that hard. Well, easy for me to say that, since I got:
English Genius
You scored 100% Beginner, 93% Intermediate, 93% Advanced, and 77% Expert!
You did so extremely well, even I can’t find a word to describe your excellence! You have the uncommon intelligence necessary to understand things that most people don’t. You have an extensive vocabulary, and you’re not afraid to use it properly! Way to go!Thank you so much for taking my test. I hope you enjoyed it!
For answers to the Beginner section only (the first ten questions), visit my blog: http://shortredhead78.blogspot.com/. I will post the answers to the other questions as soon as possible.
There are also test statistics:
Test statistics:
* Compared to users who took the test and are and in your age group:
o 100% had lower Beginner scores.
o 100% had lower Intermediate scores.
o 100% had lower Advanced scores.
o 100% had lower Expert scores.
Sunday, February 20, 2005
Someone Needs Poofreaders (And Not To Spam)
Papa Gino’s has been resorting to spam, sending out printable coupons for it and D’Angelo.
Is it still spam if it’s something good you might actually want and use? I love Papa Ginos, even without family working at their headquarters anymore.
Well, if you ask me, it’s still unsolicited bulk commercial e-mail and as likely to turn people off as not. I know I’m sure thinking I will start trying the other eight or so pizza places near me, one by one, if I can ever afford pizza again. After all, for one delivery from Papa Gino’s, I can feed the three of us for as much as five days without totally scrimping. But then, I was thinking that before I first got the spam.
Anyway, the funniest thing is the typo. Their slogan is “Pizza at its best.” Check this out:
Come on folks, “Pizza at it is best”? Oops. This is why marketing materials need proofreaders too. Ones who know the language being used, which is recognizably English in this case.
Anyway, if you’re in Papa Gino’s country, the coupons are here (as well as being in the spam itself), as is the full size version of the graphic I shrunk to fit the post. They are essentially the same as coupons you might get when they deliver you a pizza, whereby they encourage future orders.
If you want to encourage spamming from them, that is. I would bet the coupon numbers are distinct and used to track the success of the spam, er, I mean e-mail marketing, campaign.
Thursday, February 17, 2005
Anyone See Last Night’s Smallville?
It obviously had the Lois Lane character in it, and she must have been especially hot. We’ve gotten probably 60 search hits for Erica Durance nude since Smallville aired last night. That’s closer to an entire week’s worth, normally. I’ve noticed the uptick in hits after shows air, especially for Jennifer Finnigan, but nothing this extreme before.
It’s also interesting to note that most of the searches include the word nude, rather than naked. That probably says something about language usage.
Monday, February 07, 2005
Oh What A Tangled Word They Weave
Opinion: “web site” or “website”?
Which do you use? Do you have a strong preference? I do. Which is what inspired this post. The source text of a web page I am about to work on has it wrong, so I am naturally taken aback and contemplating changing it.
Of course, then there are those people who have sights on the web…
Friday, January 28, 2005
The Dangling Prepositions And The Superficial Spellers
This discussion of Jen’s roommate’s daughter’s laziness about learning or figuring out spellings, and the resulting comment thread, reminds me of when I took German in college.
My approach was to learn that certain combinations made certain sounds, making it easier to pronounce an unknown word, or guess the spelling of a heard but unseen word. For instance, ei rhymes with eye and ie rhymes with knee. Which gets me in trouble when I see a surname like Wein and find out the name’s owner pronounces it “wrong.”
A couple of the other students thought I was nuts, and that the way to go was to memorize the spelling and pronounciation of each individual word, one by one. Ugh. Lucky for them the professor never made us learn much vocabulary, which I consider perhaps his greatest failing.
To me English is similar; certain rules and commonalities, plus exceptions to be learned as you go along. Yet even some of the exceptions have reasons, rules or patterns to help remember them. All of which is why exposure to a foreign language or two (well, some of them anyway) is wonderful for getting a better grip on English, even if you never learn the other language usably.
As for dangling prepositions, which we all learned were evil, yet find difficult to avoid in many cases, I seem to recall having read that the rule was never a real one, but rather contrived and pushed by some individual centuries back. If so, it’s quite a success story at spreading unearned guilt among users of the language.
Wednesday, January 26, 2005
A Homeschooling Benefit
As I mentioned in the previous post, Deb’s favorite meteorologist says we’re going to get 7 - 10” of snow by tomorrow morning. Ugh. Barry Burbank has slightly lower expectations, but either way, it looks like both the record snowfall for January and for a single month will be broken during this storm. Well, for Boston, which means Logan, and it’s possible for most of us to get a lot more than they measure at Logan, so who knows.
This sucks.
I have a great deal of sympathy for the idea of moving to a warmer climate, but if we do, it’ll be years away, when I am in more of a position to do so.
Anyway, score another one for homeschooling. They’re now talking about having kids make up the snow days on weekends or parts of vacations, so they’re not in school half the summer. Yet if you’re homeschooling, cancellations due to snow are moot. Speaking of words people confuse; moot and mute are two completely different things. I laugh when someone says “it was a mute point.” But I digress.
But then I guess in Texas or Florida, even such mootness would be moot, given the minimal chances of snow days there.
Thursday, January 20, 2005
Let’s Get Small
Okay, something I have always found curious…
Why do they call it the small of the back?
And if there’s a small, why isn’t there a large of the back?
Tuesday, January 04, 2005
Reading Recommendation
Aubrey Turner is back and also blogging up a storm.
Speaking of which, isn’t that kind of a strange expression? ”Blanking up a storm.” Should that kind of behavior be the reserve of cloud seeders and weather control dreamers?
I, too, am pretty compulsive about hand washing while preparing food. I can keep the most disastrously messy and even dirty house, but that counter will damn well be clean for food prep. I am sometimes compulsive in other little ways, just not enough for OCD. Deb can tell you how pleased with myself I was when I alphabetized the spices in my new spice rack. I gave up on doing that to my books. For now.
Which brings us to the urge to get organized. I have it in spades, seemingly in conjunction with the temporal change of venue. It’s annoying to have it frustrated by being sick. Which seems to have improved dramatically today, at least until I ate. What’s up with that? Eating leads to congestion and a scratchier throat and uncontrollable coughing? Sheesh.
Anyway, Aubrey, always a good read, is on a roll.
Monday, January 03, 2005
It’s Only Words
I agree with Acidman about words. This is why for a long time I used a quote of my own as an e-mail sig: ”Writing is construction with building blocks of the mind.”
Here is my answer to his challenge to use four particular words in a coherent sentence:
Acidman found himself so blase about obsequious bloggers and their fawning utterances, he could no longer be moved to link any but the most truculent jocularity.
Friday, December 24, 2004
How Come
Am I the only one who thinks the expression “how come” is an oddity? I have for as long as I can remember.
Why not why? Why how come? Consider:
How come you didn’t go?”
Why didn’t you go?
Yep, I call myself verbose, yet I write of wording economy. Why use the five word version when four will do? Without sounding funny.
If you think about the likely derivation of the expression “how come” it seems even worse. I haven’t looked it up, but at a guess I’d say it’s a shortened version of “how did you come to...” or something like that. Sounds like high English versus low English: “How did you come to not go?” “Why did you not go?” Wordy and high class sounding.
Oh well. I never say “how come,” yet it’s all around me, all the time. Trying to fight it is probably about like trying to fight the totally whacked usage of “and” to mean “to.” No, I won’t “try and find something to blog about.” I will gladly “try to find something to blog about.” It’s not quite up there with the failure to grok its versus it’s that is near universal, drives me nuts, and I am trying to good naturedly accept as a pending grammatical change in the language, washing away the old rules in a tsunami-like tide of generally accepted usage. I blame the NEA.
How come it’s so hard to try and use “it’s” only when you mean “it is” and never for anything else?