http://everythingyouknowaboutenglishiswrong.com/blog1 Cantankerous commentary on what we speak and why we speak it, from Bill Brohaugh Wed, 03 Jun 2009 11:01:46 +0000 http://backend.userland.com/rss092 en Forgive me for playing a little catch-up after a long blogsnooze. And forgive me for being late in taking the opportunity to promote a worthy cause: the National Association of Letter Carriers' Stamp Out Hunger Food Drive. Watch for it next year. Or, if the Family Circus comic strip has any ... http://everythingyouknowaboutenglishiswrong.com/blog1/2009/06/03/mae-day/ Bing doesn't sing. That's because Bing is dead. Bing Crosby, that is—as the fans of "White Christmas" and of the hilarious "Road" movies with Bob Hope will recall. Bing also doesn't sing as the new name of Microsoft's search engine, once sporting the now-non-live "Live Search" name. Writes The New York Times: Microsoft’s ... http://everythingyouknowaboutenglishiswrong.com/blog1/2009/06/02/the-bing-is-dead-long-live-the-bing/ Sometimes you have to laugh your way out of a coma. Such laughter has drawn me out of "Hi. 8. Us?"—for better or worse. And it's kind of the "8" part that did it. A restaurant I like for its food and not its verbal dexterity recently issued a coupon postcard with ... http://everythingyouknowaboutenglishiswrong.com/blog1/2009/03/17/what-the-h/ As the licenseplatespeak headline implies, this blog will be back soon. http://everythingyouknowaboutenglishiswrong.com/blog1/2009/02/17/hi-8-us/ I direct you to a well-written personality profile in Esquire: Lisa Taddeo's "The Man Who Made Obama." This profile of Obama campaign manager David Plouffe features flash snapshot description, adventurous turns of phrases, and a distraction that jars the reader from the usually otherwise adroit writing that precedes and follows ... http://everythingyouknowaboutenglishiswrong.com/blog1/2009/02/04/does-not-rhyme-with-carburetor/ My favorite malapropism at this moment comes from a recent personal tussle with a manufacturer. Long story short: Said manufacturer's product Did Not Work; said manufacturer offered multiple troubleshooting suggestions but declined to replace the product; yours truly fumed via both email and telephone until the customer service rep finally ... http://everythingyouknowaboutenglishiswrong.com/blog1/2009/02/03/abdicating-advocacy/ I maintain a small file of "perfect words," ones that elegantly match form and content. One such word is sesquipedalian, which from its Latin roots roughly translates to "a foot and a half long." It means "using or characteristic of long words." Words a foot and a half long. Sesquipedalian represents ... http://everythingyouknowaboutenglishiswrong.com/blog1/2009/01/23/what-unearth/ In a news story titled "Dell to offer refunds to customers" comes this sentence: Some never got promised rebates, while others applied for zero-percent financing but were charged higher interest rates. Everything I know about math is wrong, too, but am I incorrect in assuming that charging interest of any sort would ... http://everythingyouknowaboutenglishiswrong.com/blog1/2009/01/17/uninterest-rates/ In one of those "Why didn't you just ask me and pay me the research grant?" studies, McMaster University has discovered that suffering from seborrheic dermatitis is more severe than suffering from dandruff. Or so the patient perceives—same condition, different names. Give a condition a name worthy of a TV ... http://everythingyouknowaboutenglishiswrong.com/blog1/2009/01/16/verbiterrhorage/ Kind readers and fellow word lovers, you gotta love a good phrase: heretical anapostrophism No comment, because I can't top such wonderful deconstructionist constructionism, except to point to the source of the phrase (and to some delightful commentary from Motivated Grammar, which alerted me to the phrase). All I can say is, fercri's'sake's. http://everythingyouknowaboutenglishiswrong.com/blog1/2009/01/14/nobody-expects-the-spanish-anapostrophism/