Conference thebay::joyoflex

In management circles around here, they are actually (and actively)
using the word "disconnect" - as a NOUN!!

Oy!

- dave

[The proper word, of course, is: disconnection  --  too many syllables for
 them, I guess..]

The practice of using a verb as a noun is widespread in computerese.  It is
common to hear of "doing a divide", "doing a delete", etc.  In network
parlance, "they" speak of "connect initiates", when they really mean
"connection initiations" or "connection initiation requests".

A connect initiate is a person, right?, who is just beginning to study
network architecture at a seminary.

Dave C.

	How about so don't I.  This one really drives me up the wall but some 
people have gotten so used to it they don't even notice the said it.

				Johnny O.

 I'm really surprised that nobody's mentioned "hopefully" as in "hopefully,
we will exceed our budget for FY85". Wishfully, everyone who abuses this word
will be beaten to death with all 13 volumes of the OED.

-John

The word "nuclear" *D*O*E*S N*O*T HAVE A "U" in the middle of it!!!!!!!

...diane

The one I really hate is:

			  "I could care less"
			      instead of
			 "I couldn't care less"

	   Does anyone know how it got so twisted out of shape?

							dave

	Now, now. "I could care less" is sarcasm. It is not
	grammatically incorrect; it may, however, be untrue.

-b

One phrase really annoys me. When I hear anyone say "prior to"
instead of "before", I want to strangle them. Another annoying
phrase is "I utilized something" when "I used something" will do.

Steve

I find it offensive when people write in notes  'nuff said.
It is as if they have ordained that their words are the final
and correct answer to all.  In notes, your words are rarely
the last.

I've actually seen EXTRA syllables added to a word, seemingly just to provide 
ostentatiousness.  Such as "orientated" instead of "oriented".
								-Kevin

Similarly, 'administrate[d]' for 'administer[ed].'

Dave C.

Re: various responses re: annoying phrases...

1.  The pronoun whose antecedent is 'someone' or 'somebody' or 'everyone'
    or 'nobody' et al. is NOT 'them'.  To say, "Nobody took their stuff
    home," is patently incorrect.  It should be, "Nobody took his or her
    stuff home."  PLEASE!!!

2.  'Hopefully' used as the first word of a sentence is now (1984 supplement)
    accepted by the OED.  What is this language coming to?

3.  When decrying the addition of extra syllables for purposes of 
    ostentatiousness, one should be advised that the extra syllables added
    to the word 'ostentation' don't help the cause.


Cheers,
Dick

Someone, etc and agreement with "them":

The battle has been lost by the "his or her" advocates.  "Them" is now
in common usage and is not rejected by editors.  My criterion is appearance
in magazines and newspapers.  If you have other criteria you're welcome to
apply them.

Your other points are correct.

Pat Sweeney

The one I hate is the phrase "At this point in time." If you mean
now, say so! It also reminds me of the Watergate era, which is when 
it came into frequent use. Maybe that's why I can't stand it.

beck

"at that point in time"

The employment of such empty phrases was purposeful in granting the speaker
more time to ponder the fabrication that usually followed.  

Pat Sweeney

"near miss"

no such thing.

I wonder if I am the only one who is annoyed by:

A. "area" used as an adjective to mean "local".  Every morning the announcer
   on WBUR-FM says that I can look forward to "area news at 4:30 p.m."

	I can accept "area rug", though.  Am I a hypocrite?  I can't
	think of a substitute adjective for "rug", though.

B. "healthy" to mean "healthful".  If you eat healthful foods and engage in
   healthful practices, you will be a healthy person.  Unfortunately, if you
   eat the pits from a perfectly healthy apple, the cyanide may make the
   apple unhealthful (This is probably the only case where there is any
   ambiguity).  Probably people prefer "healthy" because it is easier to
   pronounce.

On the other hand, I have little trouble with "hopefully" because it concisely
expresses the speaker's attitude of hope towards the rest of the sentence.
There never is any ambiguity between that and the "correct" meaning (in a
hopeful fashion, modifying the verb in the sentence).
There should be an adverb to express the speaker's hope.  No one is suggesting
"hopedly" or "hopably" (which would be parallel, respectively, to "expectedly"
and "predictably").  "Hopefully" meets a need, so why should we complain?

The word (or non-word) that bugs me is "irregardless".  People commonly use
it to mean to have no regards for, which is the meaning of regardless.  To
use the prefix ir- one is implying a not or negative condition.  Therefore,
irregardless means to not have on regards for.  Oh well, irregardless of
the fact, it is now in the dictionary.

Mike S.

 Re: .18:  

 The nonstandard "irregardless" probably came into being because people
 mixed up the prepositional phrases, "irrespective of" and "regardless of."
 The two phrases are synonyms.

 Neil

Sunuvagun, it *is* in the dictionary.  I guess it's time for me to start
using "disirregardless."

JP

    One of the customers at my current site frequently uses the term
    "unambiguatize"; this makes me wonder if, in an attempt to sneak
    something past him, I should "ambiguate" it.
    
    						Theo

re:.-1 I recently saw "disambiguate" used to describe the ability of a 
program to correctly deduce the intent of a vague command line.  At 
first, I was a little taken aback by the word, but I was able to 
contextuate the meaning.

re:.12
	The use of "them" when gender is not specified has a long 
history in English.  In fact, the use of the masculine (Everyone should 
take his stuff to the trash compactor.) when gender is not specified is 
not natural to English, but was the effect of legislation passed by 
Parliament (the governing body of England, not the cigarette) centuries 
ago to stop the use of the indefinite "them" which was in current use.

	These days when we are being enlightened and trying to divest 
the language of references that might be considered sexually 
discriminating, the use of them/they/their et al makes for more readable 
text than "he/she", "(s)he", "heirs" and other ridiculous constructions. 
On the other hand, I'll never go for the "chairthem of the board."

					>>>==>PStJTT

What about it's and its?  Not too many writers in this country, including 
most Noters, seem to know the difference anymore; society has become 
apostrophic, using "it's" 99% of the time.  ABC, in a paragraph that 
scrolled across the screen after the The Day After, misspelled the word.  
The Boston Globe frequently makes the mistake.  To what is this world 
coming (avoiding preposition at end of sentence)?  What, is this world 
coming, too?  Or is it going?

Cousin It is bald; It's hair fell out after surgery.  But it's OK.

Cousin It started a hair tonic company; its motto is, "It's all right. He's 
bald, too."

-Rob S. or perhaps, Rob'S.

When someone says, "I'm going to shop at Zayre's."  No.  It's Zayre.

When someone says, "I'm going to Crane's beach."  It's Crane beach.

Which do you prefer: Burger King's or McDonald, Jordan Marsh's or 
Filene?

That must be what's wrong with love in this world: everyone wants to be 
possessive.

-r*b

    My all time favorite is, "Where are we at?" and others of this ilk.

    Does no-one else cringe when they hear:
    "Yea(h) big", from someone who has no idea of the size to which
    they refer, and "Basically", from those intent on convincing
    you that they have thought out a topic from first principles.

People should make less mistake's with apostrophe's.  Thing's like that
make me nauseous.  (So that's what does it!)

BU

  Ahem.  The first dictionary entry for "nauseous" gives: "causing
  nausea: sickening."  (Ok, so the second entry gives: "affected with
  nausea or disgust.")

  Replacing "nauseous" with "nauseated" will remove the ambiguity -- as
  it stands   one cannot tell whether bad usage of apostrophes leaves
  you sickening or sickened...

  JP

re .29

Ahem again.  Tastes great, less filling, but FEWER mistakes.  
Remember, "Less is fewer, sometimes."  

-Fewerious Rob

    re .30:
    
    Humorless, humorless... And people accuse edp of being picayune.

Re .32 (et al.):

Thank you, Jon.  Its nice that someone understand's.  I will try to be fewer
humerus in the future from now on. (This should draw some fire).

Re .30:

John P.:  When you get to know me better, you will agree with the first
definition.

Maybe I should use smiley faces? 

BU

Would anyone care to see the Dave Barry article on grammar and the use
of apostrophies?  (Or is that "apostrophy's"?)  It's very good, and even
has some "Irate Letters to the Editor" in response to the column which
are a real howl...

I'll post it if anyone's interested...  (I did a DIR/TITLE="Barry", etc 
and couldn't find anything.)

-- Sam
(Or is that "-- 'Sam"?)

Dear BU,

I guess one of us should use smiley faces (though the very thought
nauseates me).  I was trying to be cute without using them and look
what it got me...  Here we are in this most precise of notes files,
I said I was picking a nit, and I apologized beforehand.  Yet I stand
accused of pischiling (sp?)...  

And not to worry -- I suspect I've turned a few stomachs myself..

JP

    
    The orginal reply for 4.38 has been removed by the Moderator.
    
    Fellow Notesmiths who read the orginal will likely understand.
    Those who did not read it are not missing anything.
    
    Anyone who wishes to take issue with my action may reach me by
    mail.
    

    Thank You,
    
    Chuck Noble, Moderator

    RE:.25
    An Aussie protests:
    'You tell me where you're coming from, and I'll tell you where
    your head is at.'
    
    Have a nice/great/mellow day now!
    
    - Giles

    To continue:
    
    	"include me in!"
    
    And the ever-popular "...and ect cetera" (sic)(sic)
    
    Bill

Re: .-n re:BU 
	I knew Mr. Upper before I knew that he worked for DEC;
any of his definitions apply... BTW, noone has mentioned that his
node::name is a definition of what amphetamine research is all about!

Also; don't you cringe when you hear "penultimate" when
"archetypical" is the intent?

Bruce

    
    So help me out of the dark - what is BTW?  It's not a word, as it
    has no vowels, so it must be abbreviation (not even an acronym??
     for SHAME, DECies!!).  If it's an abbreviation, it's for several
    words, and hence - a "phrase".
    
    And, it's annoying.  So what's the scoop?

     "By The Way." If you don't know that one, you might also
    not know ASAP, "As Soon As Possible", and <WAG>, "Wild-A*s
    Guess". Also JV, "Journal Voucher", some sort of magic that
    the financial wizards perform so that somebody else pays for
    your expenses.
     I had almost forgotten what it's like.
    
    -John

  Also, 

    FWIW = for what it's worth

    WRT  = with regard to

 JP

    Not to mention the ever-popular  RTFM:  Read the F***ing Manual.

    re .45:
    
    RTFM stands for Read The Manual. The "F" is silent.

    	Jon

    
    
    	There's an extension also to WAG, that's SWAG. It's a
    	Scientific WAG.
    

    I have two pet annoyances that must be really obscure.  I have never
    heard anyone else mention either of them.
    
    The correct use of bring and take.  Everyone says "What shall we
    bring to the cottage".  You take something away, but you bring it
    back.
    
    The position of "only" in a sentence.  I always hear something like
    "He only runs in 10K races" instead of "He runs only in 10K races".
    Every day when I notice "Seatbelts only work when you wear them"
    on the back of my inspection sticker, I could cry.

>    The correct use of bring and take.  Everyone says "What shall we
>    bring to the cottage".  You take something away, but you bring it
>    back.

I hope you meant that SOME people ASK 
		"What shall we bring to the cottage?"

PS: I was taught that the correct question to ask is
		"What MAY we bring?"
PPS: And the proper answer is
		"How kind of you to ask.  A dessert would be best."

      Re .48
      
      I was taught that 'only' modifies the word immediately preceding
      (and hence, it is wrong at the beginning of a sentence).
      
>    "He only runs in 10K races" 
      would mean he is the sole person who runs in 10K races, and
      
>    "He runs only in 10K races"
      would mean that the sole activity which he performs in 10K
      races is running.
      
      "He runs in 10K races only" is probably what most people would
      mean by either of the two examples--that 10K races are the
      sole races in which he runs.
      
      I've also heard people use 'only' in place of 'but.'  Can anyone
      corroborate this?
      
      Dave C.

    re; .50
    
    I will collaborate it, only aren't you being a bit picky?
    
    -m chuck
    

      No, actually I was being nit picky only.
      
      Dave C.

To go in roughly reverse order:

In .51:

>    I will collaborate it, only aren't you being a bit picky?

Was this an intentional slip for "corroborate"?


In .50:

>      I was taught that 'only' modifies the word immediately preceding
>      (and hence, it is wrong at the beginning of a sentence).
>      
>>    "He only runs in 10K races" 
>      would mean he is the sole person who runs in 10K races, and
>      
>>    "He runs only in 10K races"
>      would mean that the sole activity which he performs in 10K
>      races is running.
>      
>      "He runs in 10K races only" is probably what most people would
>      mean by either of the two examples--that 10K races are the
>      sole races in which he runs.

Well, now ... not in the language I learnt.  In my English English, 
"He only runs in 10K races" is ambiguous (or [an]triguous (!)), but NONE 
of its meanings is that he's the sole person to run in such.  It could
mean he only runs and never walks, or only in 10K races but never in
10K charity runs, or ... .  And you notice how I said that: "only"
always PRECEDES what it qualifies.  So the only (!) corresponding way
I can say "He is the sole person who runs in 10K races" is "Only he
runs in 10K races". 

I'd be interested to see what the second example ("He runs only in 10K
races") means to a range of English speakers, on both sides of the
Atlantic.  I'd be very surprised if it meant what Dave says even to
Americans. 

The last example ("He runs in 10K races only") sounds clumsy, and
almost makes one want to interpret "only" as a sentence adverb --
although its meaning IS what Dave says, I suppose. 


In .48:

>    I have two pet annoyances that must be really obscure.  I have never
>    heard anyone else mention either of them.
>    
>    The correct use of bring and take.  Everyone says "What shall we
>    bring to the cottage".  You take something away, but you bring it
>    back.
>    
>    The position of "only" in a sentence.  I always hear something like
>    "He only runs in 10K races" instead of "He runs only in 10K races".
>    Every day when I notice "Seatbelts only work when you wear them"
>    on the back of my inspection sticker, I could cry.

For me, "bring" versus "take" is NOT obscure.  I've been suffering 
from listening to this mistake ever since I married an American. 
It's a distinction not mirrored in any other language I know, so I
think it may have come originally from a mistake made by those
arriving in America and learning English as adults (i.e. imperfectly).  
There are probably others -- perhaps a now-seldom heard "dangling" 
preposition where the pronoun is missed out, which comes from several 
languages spoken in Central Europe: "Your girl-friend wants to come? 
Well, bring her with."  ("with YOU", "with US", etc.)
                **** 

Something very similar the the "only" business which annoys ME 
greatly (in fact, it could be a reason for the existence of the "only"
business) is written phrases where an adverb precedes an auxiliary
verb, e.g. "I only am sure of one thing: ...", or "He usually had
finished by the time ...".  It annoys me mainly because it is not
SPOKEN that way, so it seems an affectation in written style
(normally, the first example is pronounced "I'm only sure of one
thing: ...", and the second "He'd usually finished ..."). 


Re .44:

>    WRT  = with regard to

I thought "w.r.t." meant "with RESPECT to", whereas the American 
"with regard to" -- which is slightly different -- can be abbreviated
by "re".  "Re" is from Latin, of course, and not an abbreviation of
the word "regard" -- "res" meaning "thing", in the (I think) ablative
case (oh the pedantry!). 


Re previous replies:

I wish DEC Europe also had these juicy, expressive abbreviations -- 
WAG and so on.  The only one I know is "w.r.t.".


Gabriel.

    re .53,
    
    I can see how "he only runs in 10k races" can be interpreted as
    referring to a single person running in a race.  Just think of it
    as: "He, only, runs in 10k races", or reworded, "Only he runs in
    10k races".
    
    -Kurt*
    

Mine is the saying, "You can't have your cake and eat it too."

What a masochistic sentiment!  Why bother having the cake if you only plan to
tease yourself with it?  It sounds like this is in praise of self-denial


A clearer version is (from Bartlett's Quotations):

"You can't eat your cake and have it too."

Much more thoughtful and metaphysical -- this one's about choices.  It at least
causes you to pause for a second to get the message. 

Mark

    VERY UNIQUE
    
    Anybody know what this means? 
    
    sm

    Re: -.1
    
    > VERY UNIQUE
    
    When used, it probably has an intended meaning closer to 
    'very ingenious'.                                    
    
    I'll grant that something will either be unique or not unique, with
    no scale of a degree of 'unigueness'.  However, certain unique things
    may have been created with a degree of ingenuity of cleverness.
    
    If someone used the expression on me, I think I would be able to
    discern the gist of the communication.
    

    
    
    should have read: '...ingenuity or cleverness...'
                                    --
         
           
    

    I seem to be hearing "very unique" quite often lately.
    It is probably a misuse.  I think what the speaker usually
    means is "rare" or "unusual", which is what the speaker should
    say.  "Unique" should admit no qualifications.
    
    Bernie
    

    Related to .57, there was a television commercial a few years ago
    where a 'man-in-the-street' said he liked the American Express Card
    "because it was so universally accepted".  That bothered me; is
    it possible for there to be degrees of universality?
    
    Bernie

< Note 4.60 by SPECTR::GOLDSTEIN >
                        -< Everything minus one or two >-

    Related to .57, there was a television commercial a few years ago
    where a 'man-in-the-street' said he liked the American Express Card
    "because it was so universally accepted".  That bothered me; is
    it possible for there to be degrees of universality?
    
    Bernie

All of these (the last few notes) remind me of Edwin Newman's examples of
redundacies FREE GIFT and foggy language from his book STRICTLY SPEAKING.

Mark

    While we're on that subject, my favorite peeve is the corruption
    of the word "so", or rather the omission of the accompanying "that".
    For example, replacing a sentence such as "This sunset is so lovely
    that it should be captured on canvas" to "This sunset is so lovely".
    Actually, what should have been said in this case is probably "This
    sunset is lovely".

    Re: -.1
    
    For what it's worth, my American Heritage Dictionary has a definition
    of the word 'so' as: Indeed -*adj.* True; factual.
    
    Is there anything wrong with: "This sunset is indeed lovely."?
    

    Re .63:
    
    An adjective can't modify "lovely", which is also an adjective.  How
    about "so" as an adverb, "to a great extent or degree: VERY,
    EXTREMELY"?
    
    
    				-- edp 

    
    
    	Are there degrees of necessity? Can something be "absolutely
    	necessary" or maybe "not very necessary"?
    
    zack
    

    I think the problem is the difference between the written and
    spoken word.
    
    If any of you have ever written a script, you know how difficult
    it is to convey "real" speech.  In normal conversation, people
    tend to use words with fewer syllables, and also tend to use
    more adjectives and adverbs.
    
    "Completely unique" may be a terrible phrase, but it's used
    in spoken commercials to emphasize the word "unique".  I'm
    not sure I condone this use, but there is a stronger difference
    between written and spoken language than is usually taught
    in school.  Punctuation helps, but it still can't convey the
    full meaning of some subtle spoken patterns.  Although I detest
    the smiley-face syndrome, it still shows how difficult it
    sometimes is to convey the speaker's meaning through written
    statements.

    re .66:
    
    >     "Completely unique" may be a terrible phrase, but it's used
    >     in spoken commercials to emphasize the word "unique". 
    
    And what kind of defense is that? Commercials, and advertising in
    general, are the worst abusers of the English Language. How many
    ridiculous words have you seen invented in advertisements?
    I've decided that commercials do not use English at all, it's a
    completely foreign language that almost sounds like English.
    
    sm

    Commercials DELIBERATELY violate every rule of the language. This
    is so that if someone sues an advertiser for failing to live up
    to the claims of the ads, the advertiser can claim that the ads
    were meaningless - which they are! Listen carefully sometime - in
    at least 90% of the ads you can detect a deliberate error of grammar.
    The errors are probably there in the other 10% as well, but our
    ears have been so long trained to overlook the anomalies that we
    can no longer hear them.

    re -1:  AHA! Deliberate grammatical errors!  That explains
            why they say:
    
            "1/3 *less* calories than their regular beer!"
           
    
    					andrew

    I have always been intrigued by commercials which use such statements
    as: "There is no product which contains MORE [or LESS] of xyz than
    our product!"
    
    The implication is that the product being advertised has the most
    [or least] of xyz.  In reality, they are admitting that their product
    has just the same amount as all the others.
    

And FORD, who at one time used the slogan
	25% More Quality.

		N

Cuprinol (I think) wood stain ad: "Nobody does wood as good."

>CACHE::MARSHALL "beware the fractal dragon"          12 lines  21-AUG-1986 14:05
>    re .66:
>    >     "Completely unique" may be a terrible phrase, but it's used
>    >     in spoken commercials to emphasize the word "unique". 
>    And what kind of defense is that? Commercials, and advertising in
>    general, are the worst abusers of the English Language. How many
>    ridiculous words have you seen invented in advertisements?
>    I've decided that commercials do not use English at all, it's a
>    completely foreign language that almost sounds like English.
>    sm


		You are to be accused of as bad an offense,
		namely the use of "completely foreign".

/Eric

    what's wrong with "completely foreign"? 
    
    Can't something be "partially foreign"?
    
    unique - 1. being the only one of its kind, solitary, sole, single.
             2. being without an equal or equivalent; unparalleled.
    
    foreign - 2. of a country other than one's own
              4. situated in an abnormal or improper place.
    
    I do not see why something can't be partially of a country other
    than one's own, or, completely of a country other than one's own.
    
    "unique" is a much more restrictive word that does not allow
    qualifiers.
    
        /
       (  ___
        ) ///
       /

    Advertising also deliberately abuses the language in other ways.
    Like saying that a particular popular product has "kreme" filling
    so they can't be sued because the filling doesn't use cream. But
    I'm sure that there are people who believe that "kreme"="cream".
    
    And how many young kids might learn how to spell relief as "r-o-
    l-a-i-d-s"?
    
    --- jerry

    SET PEDANTRY=ON

    I've said it elsewhere in this conference: language is a living
    thing.  Words and phrases enter the language through "common
    consent" or some such thing: if it's used often enough and passes
    muster often enough, then it becomes standard, despite the best
    efforts of the rule-makers or interpreters to halt it.
    Advertising and other mass-media are continually influencing the
    language.

    Thus, I expect that "like" will probably one day be synonymous
    with "as", "ain't" will be acceptable, etc.

    I understand that in British English, contractions such as
    "don't", "can't", etc., are still not considered proper English.

    There's one problem we don't have in English: it's considered
    proper for our language to borrow from other languages.  French,
    German, and Russian (to name a few) linguists are continually
    rising in horror at the bastardization of their native tongue
    with foreign phrases creeping in.  So pick your favorite language
    regulation, folks; it probably won't do much good to complain
    about it.

    re .76:
    (you forgot to SET PEDANTRY=OFF at the end. :-) )
    
    I had read somewhere that "ain't" is an acceptable contraction of
    "am not". So "I ain't going to the store" is correct while
    "He ain't going to the store" is incorrect.
    
    I suppose the choice of using "I'm not" vs. "I ain't" would be 
    controlled somewhat like "I will" vs. "I shall". It depends on the
    emphasis.
    
    Now I did read this in a respectable book on usage, but can't remember
    the title or author. Anybody else see this, or am I going to flamed
    to charcoal?
    
    		/
    	       (  ___
    		) ///
    	       /     

    Re .77:
    
    The choice is more than emphasis.  Consider the sentence "I am going
    to the store, am I not?".  This is correct, but it sounds too formal
    for everyday use.  On the other hand, "I am going to the store,
    aren't I?" sound good, but it is incorrect because "I" is singular
    and "are" is plural.  The compromise for correctness and everyday
    use is "I am going to the store, ain't I?".
    
    
    				-- edp

< Note 4.78 by BEING::POSTPISCHIL "Always mount a scratch monkey." >
                                     -<  >-

<    Re .77:
    
<    The choice is more than emphasis.  Consider the sentence "I am going
<    to the store, am I not?".  This is correct, but it sounds too formal
<    for everyday use.  On the other hand, "I am going to the store,
<    aren't I?" sound good, but it is incorrect because "I" is singular
<    and "are" is plural.  The compromise for correctness and everyday
<    use is "I am going to the store, ain't I?".
<    
<    
<    				-- edp


I don't usually think of me as a language purist, but I have a hard time 
picturing someone saying your last sentence.  I agree choice 1 sounds too 
stilted.

The best choice would be not to ask yourself a question.  "I'M GOING TO THE 
STORE."(!)  In spoken language I also use "ain't" for emphasis, ie, "You better
believe I ain't gonna let them get away with that!"  The word has such a hard
sound it thuds on my ear -- good for bravado, bad for every day discussion.

Mark 

    Lord Peter Whimsey and Flashman use "ain't" as the "am not"
    contraction.  I believe that this was an affectation of certain
    upper class Englishmen of the 19th Century.  Then again, perhaps
    it wasn't an affectation.  Both of the above gentlemen would say
    "I ain't...." with no qualms, but would almost certainly have balked
    at "You ain't..."  (just as we would object to "You am not...").

                                                   
                  /
                 (  ___
                  ) ///
                 /

    As I understand it, if something is "free" it doesn't cost anything.
    That does not seem good enough for advertisers today; they always speak
    of something being "absolutely free," as if it were better than merely
    free.
    
    Bernie

    Re: -.1
    
    I think the problem with using the word "free" is that in may cases
    it is a _conditional_ "free".  What it usually boils down to is
    that you may get something "free of additional cost" if you buy
    or do something else.
    
    If something is "absolutely free" and you just happen to be there
    anyway, you're supposed to believe that it will not cost you any
    real time or money.  Even then, I don't believe that anything is
    really "free".  It might be a great bargain, but you have to give
    up something for it, even if it's only a few seconds of your time
    and a few of your grey cells to remember where you got it.
    
    

    Then there's
    
    "Absolutely free! Send for yours today. Please include $1.00 for
    postage and handling."
    
    --- jerry

    
    There is one phrase that bugs me that has not been mentioned yet.
    The use of the phrase "may or may not"
    I claim that may not is implicitly understood when saying may.
    
    Anyone agree?
    
    Mark
    

    I think there just might be a subtle difference between the use
    of "may" and "may not". Combining them would try to perfectly equalize
    the statement between 'optimism' and 'pessimism'.
                                                   
                  /
                 (  ___
                  ) ///
                 /
    

    and what about whether or not.... my statement stands for that one
    too.  It is redundant.  Is there a redundant area?  I have a bunch
    of them.
    
    Mark
    

Has anyone mentioned the phrase "x number of"?
Substituting the known (but transient) value of 9 for the variable x,
I have 9 number of dollars in my pocket.

Re .87:  I think there are a couple of redundant areas.  They are under the
jurisdiction of the Department of Redundancy Department.  They are for
repeat messages which have been sent before.

BU

    RE: .88  "X marks the number"
    
    I have seen the use of lower case a and lower case n for transient
    alpha and numeric entries.

                              -< Pointless >-
    What about "Don't mention it", pretty silly really because you already
    have!
    
    Icki..

	"Least wise"

	As in, "I think that's how it happened.  Least wise, I'm pretty sure."

	I just saw this this morning in another conference.  Yuck!

Why do people insist on refering to 

	1) The Digital Equipment Corporation as "the corporate", and

	2) Singular tapes, discs, floppies etc. as media?

    re .92:
    
>    Why do people insist on refering to 
>	2) Singular tapes, discs, floppies etc. as media?
 
    to avoid calling it a "medium", which seems to have too many meanings
    for its own good.
    
    Why is TV referred to as "The Media"? maybe its analogous to
    "The Mafia". 
    
    Is one "mafia" a "mafium"?
    
                                                   
                  /
                 (  ___
                  ) ///
                 /
    

    Re .92:
    
    For that matter, why do people call tapes or disks "media" at all?  I
    hardly ever call my car "transport" or my phone "communication".
    
    Come to think of it, I don't recall hearing anybody refer to a single
    disk or tape as "media".  Can you give an example?  I'm also not sure
    what usage you are referring to in the other item, "the corporate". 
    
    
    				-- edp
                                                                       

    I go along with edp...data may be stored on various types of
    _media_.  These could include punched cards, paper tape, magnetic
    disks and tapes, magnetic stripe cards, etc.  If you have selected
    a specific data storage medium for your use, you would usually refer
    to it by its own designation.
    
    Likewise, the news dissemination _media_ includes a variety of modes...
    newspapers, magazines, radio, television.  
    
    -------
    
    Since a corporation is a singular entity for legal and tax purposes,
    it is entirely correct to refer to _the corporate_ [policy (or
    whatever)].
    

Re: "least wise" (.91) - 

$ set flame=defensive_of_someone_else's_attempt_at_humor

I hope you're not referring to a bit of humor
(its date-time stamp matches yours) written
in "Down East" dialect. The misuse (one of several
in that note) is apparently intentional.

$ set flame=off

If you saw this "non-phrase" in another note, I
apologize for the flame.

Bruce

    RE: "least wise":
    
    I have to agree, this is an abomination. The correct version is
    "leastways", as in "Leastways, we don't got to fetch the water
    from yonder well no more."
    
    -b

    I work in Storage Systems designing testers, head testers and _media_
    testers. The _media_ in question is the magnetic layer on hard and/or
    floppy disks. When discussing the composition of a magnetic desk,
    the layer that actually holds the magnetism is invariably referred
    to as the _media_ layer. I have *never* seen it called a _medium_.
                                                   
                  /
                 (  ___
                  ) ///
                 /
    

    Re .98:
    
    In "media testers" and "media layer", "media" is being used as an
    adjective, which I think changes things.
    
    
    				-- edp

    re .99:
    
    Maybe in those specific cases, but I still hear "media" used as
    a singular word invariably when talking about a storage medium.
    They will say some material is a better media than another. 
    Medium/media is going the way of datum/data. The plural becoming
    its own word detached from the singular form. 
    
    I also swear that I have heard people talk of multiple _medias_
    (medii ?).
    
                                                   
                  /
                 (  ___
                  ) ///
                 /

    "Media" is shorthand; the full expression being "magnetic media".
    Certainly "medium" or "media" should not be used as a substitute
    for "floppy", "tape", or whatever when specification is called
    for, but only when referring to data storage, ah, media in general.
    
    The *other* "media" is likewise shorthand for "news media".
    
    --- jerry

    Perhaps we should write an opera about "media."

     "Medium/media" are discussed at length in Note 7.
     A peculiar annoying phrase that puzzles me greatly is
    "I'm like", which seems to mean "I said." My teen-aged nephews
    and niece report conversations with a continuous stream of "So
    I'm like 'So what?', and he's like 'Well, so I hadda stay after
    school', and I'm like 'Really?' <pronounced, incidentally,as
    'rully' or 'rilly'>...." 
     Odd. We never used to talk funny when I was in high school.
    
    -John

    Why do people go around quoting nulls (!?!?) when they say
    
    " ... quote unquote <word> ..." instead of "...quote <word> unquote"
    
    and is this practice unique to Massachusetts?  
    
    
    I suspect that this colloquialism stems from the older practice
    of using the two forefingers of each hand to place imaginary quotation
    marks "around" the word as you speak it!
    
    	Rick 
    	Merrill
    

    
    Today in The Globe, there's an article about Seabrook in which they
    state that the odds of a 747 crashing into the financial district
    of Boston are greater "by a couple of orders of magnitude" than
    an accident at the Seabrook Power Plant.
    
    Just what on earth does "orders of magnitude" mean, anyway?
    
    
    
    
    

  An order of magnitude is a power of ten.  In other words, if X is greater
  than Y by an order of magnitude, it is ten times greater; if X is greater
  by two orders of magnitude, it is one hundred times greater.

  JP

    re .106:
    
    Roughly, that is true, but is often used much more vaguely than
    that.
    
    For example 11 and 99 are within an order of magnitude.
    
    10,000 (1*10^4) is 2 orders of magnitude greater than 900 (9*10^2)
                                        
    And then to say "several orders of magnitude", means it is a little
    more accurate than a guess.
    
    (is "guesstimate" discussed anywhere in here?)
                                                   
                  /
                 (  ___
                  ) ///
                 /
    

    Orders of magnitude are the laws which govern magnetism, passed
    by Congress in 1904.  The best known one states: "Opposites attract
    each other."  Others are: "A well-dressed man has a lot of magnetism",
    and "Pole vaulting is illegal over the U.S. between the hours of
    1am and 6am EDT."

    Re .104:
    
    I thought a few years ago "unquote" wasn't even accepted as a word by
    most dictionaries, but American Heritiage indicates it is "used by a
    speaker to indicate the end of a quotation".  ("End quote" would have
    been proper previously.)  The funny thing is, they don't indicate
    "quote" is used by a speaker to indicate the beginning of a quotation.
    Stack error!
    
    They also have a strange usage note:  "_Quote_ as a substitute for
    _quotation_ is considered unacceptable in writing by a large majority
    of the Usage Panel.".
    
    
    				-- edp 

re the debate on media/corporate

sorry I couldn't get back sooner...

examples of the misuse of the words, that can be heard frequently in Reading:-

	1	Insert a bootable media an press restart!!!!

	2	The corporate is allocating resourse(s) for that project soon

They drive me to distraction, but if you feel they've been done to death we can 
bury them now.

Richard

Re .102:

An opera about media?  Change the spelling and pronunciation slightly and
we might be able to oblige.

|:^<)=

BU

    
    	"Needless to say" always irks me.  I often hear salespeople
    	saying it.  To me it sounds pompous (as if they have complete
    	authority over the subject and are talking down to me.  To 
    	them is is a needless item, but they will do me a "favor" and
    	say it to me anyway.)  Of course they always DO say that which
    	they tell me is needless to say.
    
    	Joe Oppelt

    One way I was taught to tell the difference between "fewer" and
    "less" which made it easy to tell which to use was
    
    If you can count them -- use fewer
    If you cannot -- use less
    
    i.e. There is less sugar in the small spoon than the large one.
    There are fewer grains of sugar in the small spoon than the large
    one. 

    An annoying phrase using fewer or less is
    
    No fewer than
    
    The phrase is usually used redundantly.  Rarely is it used as
    "greater than or equal to" which it actually is.
    
    e.g. the school principle who says "No fewer than 7 of our students
    went on to University." but means "7 of our students ..."
    
    -----------------
    
    Back to superlatives for things that don't require them, one that
    annoys me particularly is
   
    the very first      (or very last)
    
    
    

    Re .114:
    
    >Back to superlatives for things that don't require them, one that
    >annoys me particularly is
    >
    >the very first      (or very last)
     
    One that both annoys and amuses me is the quasi-superlative, "one
    of the first."  "First" is binary; either it's the first, or it
    isn't.  Yet, "The Stanley was one of the first vehicles to be propelled
    by steam,"is probably giving it a status it doesn't deserve.
    
    Steve Kallis, Jr.

   "One of the first" always implied to me that there were others at
   about the same time.  Which means that having been "the first" of
   others that came directly after would not be such a big deal.
   
   
   							Terza
   
   

    re .116
    
    Pray tell me why you used the construction  " ... at about ..."?
    
    Either there were others *at* the same time ... or ... there were
    others *about* the same time.
    
    Forgive the pedantry but .....
    
    stuart

    G'day
    
    I don't know if it has been previously mentioned by others, but
    my most disliked phrase is 'most unique'.
    
    In reference to the past couple of notes, presumably the engine
    that was one of the first would have some of the most unique features?
    
    Derek
    

    Re .114
    
    I agree about `one of the first' being often (usually) redundant
    and ridiculous - especially in forms of words like your title:
    "Congratulations. You are one of the first...'.
    
    But it seems to me that there are also contexts in which the phrase
    `one of the first' does mean something; what it means hinges on
    whether `first' is binary.
    
    Here's an example of what I mean: way back when, some film
    technicians got together and decided to form the ACTT. They
    were the founder - or first - members of that body. My father
    was `one of the first' in that sense; the number on his card
    was 9 (but it would be inaccurate to say that he was the 9th
    member of the ACTT).
    
    Of course there are umpteen ways of rephrasing - `one of the original/
    originating/founder members', for a start - which may be preferable in
    company where phrases like `one of the first' are going to make people
    wince.  But I guess you wouldn't have to look in too weighty a
    dictionary to find a meaning of `first' other than `the ordinal
    adjective pertaining to the digit "one"'. 

    b

    I'm afraid I don't understand what's wrong with "at about." It's a
    truncated version of "at *or* about." 
    
    Given the "or"'s position phonetically, it's rather natural for it to
    get blurred into non-existence. Morphetically, "at about" and "at or
    about" are very close, which spurs the process. 

    	Jon

    re .120
    
    Redundancy.
    
    If something occurred *about* five o'clock then it includes the condition
    that it ocurred *at* five o'clock.
    
    stuart
    

    Next annoying phrase ...
    
    'a' is different than 'b'

    I was always taught that 'than' is used in comparisons with less / more

    and that
    
    'a' is different *from* 'b'
    
    
    stuart

    re .121
    
>    Redundancy.
    
>    If something occurred *about* five o'clock then it includes the condition
>    that it ocurred *at* five o'clock.
    
Yes, the instant 'five o'clock' is included in the time range described by
'about five o'clock'. But, you still need both 'at' and 'about' in the phrase,
since they serve different purposes. "...it occured at ..." tells you that you
are going to find out when or where the occurrence was.  "... about five
o'clock" tells you that the time was close to 5 o'clock. (How close is a
subjective assessment made by the speaker, and an assumption made by the
audience). 

To say "....it occurred about ...." lacks something. Even if you convince
yourself that it is grammatically perfect, and prove it to the satisfaction of
everyone else in the conference, I still think it sounds wrong. 

	Steve

    re .123
    
    If we got on the basis of "how it sounds", then "at about" sounds
    clumsy and awkward to my ears....  This proves that sound is in
    the ears of the beholder (or some other stolen metaphor).
    
    In an effort to omit this subjective analysis, I applied logical
    analysis which implies that "at or about" contains redundancy.
    
    stuart    

    "Each and every..."
    
    Makes my skin crawl.
    
    Spd

    My maternal grandmother was always outraged by "back and forth,"
    as "He was pacing ...."  She would fume, saying, "Before he comes
    back, he's got to go forth."
    
    Steve Kallis, Jr.

    I have just been reading note 11 about the usage of "hopefully"
    and as a suggested follow on that common usage is correct usage.
    This reminded me of a sentence used primarily by advertisers but
    occasionally elsewhere ....
    
    A world full of users cannot be wrong.   (or some other large number)
    
    The use of cannot is logically incorrect.  Statistically, it may
    be shown that this group is unlikely to be "wrong" but they most
    certainly can be wrong.  This is typically used in situations where
    there is insufficient other proof.

    Often seen on signs ....
    
    
    YES, WE ARE OPEN
    
    
    Who was asking?  I wasn't!  Why does the sign writer feel that they
    must answer a question rather than state a fact?  I saw this long
    before "Jeopardy" too, so it wasn't from watching television!

    re: .127
    
    The slogan you object to appears to be addressing not the concept
    of whether you've proven you're right but the concept of "wrong".
    
    To say that someone or group of someones "can" be "wrong" requires
    that the "wrong" involved be an unmistakable, measurable goal. For
    instance, I can be wrong about the date of the battle of Hastings
    or the atomic weight of a hydrogen atom.
    
    But a wide class of commonly held beliefs, commonly used terms,
    and shared behaviors are not so much right or wrong as merely
    agreed to.  For instance, in the States we drive on the right side
    of the road and someone driving on the left is driving on the
    wrong side of the road.  If, however, the majority of us decided
    it was better to drive on the other side, then the left side of
    the road would become the correct one and the people driving on
    the right would be in the wrong.  (I've been longing to use that
    line for so long . . . ) 
    
    The business slogan in question is a variation of the old saying,
    "The customer is always right."   They are saying that if a
    majority of their customers want something, that something is by
    definition right, no matter what the company thinks would be good
    for the customers.  The customers really *cannot* be wrong in this
    situation because the customers are the ones who define what
    "wrong" is.
    
    Language is another of these common behaviors that is defined by
    common agreement.  It works because we have all collectively
    agreed that a set of arbitrary symbols, in our case the letters
    our alphabet, are to be combined in certain ways to make words,
    and those words are to be arranged in certain ways to convey the
    meanings that we commonly need to share.  
    
    If the majority of the people using a language start to think of a
    different meaning when they hear a certain word, or to use a
    grammatical construction that differs from previous constructions,
    that doesn't mean it's "wrong" no matter how much you and I
    dislike it.  It just means the language is changing and growing.
    The change may be inaccurate or unclear, it may indicate
    unfortunate social trends, and it may show lack of respect for the
    level of education and knowledge that you and I have attained, but
    it isn't WRONG. 
    
    --bonnie
    
    
    
    

    re .127 & .129
    
    Indeed, I take your points about the concept of right and wrong.
    All too often we attach the concept of "right" and "wrong" to ideas
    or practices that we really shouldn't ...  Right and wrong implies
    nothing in between; they are binary in the final analysis.  Often
    other comparatives such as "better / best" should be applied to
    these ideas.
    
    Take your example of the right and wrong side of the road to drive
    on for instance.  There is a "better" side of the road to drive
    on (ignoring the legalities).  I describe it as better because if 
    you chose the "worse" side you stand a poorer chance of reaching 
    your destination intact but you still may reach it.  The law dictates
    this into right and wrong.
    
    What makes the right-hand side of the road the better side of the
    road (and hence the right side of the road) is again up for question.
    This is a separate issue of better and worse ... and hence right
    and wrong.
    
    What I primarily object to is that this argument "A million users
    cannot be wrong" is that it is used as a "follow the sheep" argument.
    It leads few to question the validity of the original claim that
    is usually unsupported by any other proof of product X being better
    than any other.
    
    A million users says the product is popular.  After all, millions
    of smokers said that smoking was good for them ... it relaxed their
    nerves.  Nicotine is a known stimulant.  These millions of users
    were "wrong" (in more ways than one!).
    
    If they said "join a million satisfied users", I wouldn't hold the
    same objection.  I still maintain that just because n users use
    a product, they can still be "wrong"!
    
    stuart

    ... from people who can't bring themselves to say "rarely" or "seldom."

Lew Lasher

    re: .130
    
    Are we talking about the same ad?  I've seen the "join 50 million
    others" ads, but I thought you were referring to the one that appeared
    in Business Week and several other magazines last month (I think
    for HP, but I might be remembering wrong).  
    
    It had a big headline saying that "A million customers cannot be
    wrong."  I thought the ad said pretty clearly, "They can't be wrong
    because we define "right" to be what the customers want, unlike that
    other computer company that spends all its Chinese Red dollars trying
    to make you want what's good for you."
    
    But if you're talking about just generic ads that try to use phony
    peer pressure on you -- well, I think they can be criticized on
    a lot of grounds other than their lack of logic!
    
    --bonnie 

    re .132
    
    Actually, no, I didn't see that ad .... sounds like a good thing
    I didn't, it is reminiscent of an ad for Wendy's hamburgers!!!
    There was another ad of that ilk that offended my sensibilities
    the other day ...   I haven't seen too much of this kind of advertising
    recently and suddenly it is in advertising vogue again.

    The one I hate the most is 
    
    	twice more
    
    When the speaker mean "twice" or "twice as many"
         
    "Twice more" means "Three times"
    
    Clay
    

    re:.134
    
    On the same idea, I get irritated when people refer to, say,
    the third book in a series as being the "third sequel". It's
    actually the *second* sequel.
    
    --- jerry

    "Twice more" in this sense is a regionalism.  I think Georgia
    upstate, but I don't remember for sure. 
    
    --bonnie

    Re .136 (bonnie):
    
    > .....................................  I think Georgia
    >upstate, but I don't remember for sure.       
     
    Georgia _always_ upstate. :-)
    
    Re .135 (Jerry):
    
    Well, look at the movies!  The _direct_ sequel (i.e., no
    intermediaries) of _The Man From Snowy River_ is _Return to Snowy
    River II_; the direct sequel to _Rambo: First Blood Part II_  is
    _Rambo III_, and so it goes ...
    
    Steve Kallis, Jr.

    
    Ok guys, admit it, some of you doubtless use the term 'all of a
    sudden'. And just what, may I ask, is a 'sudden' ?
    Try 'suddenly', you know it makes sense !
    
    Also, please forgive me if I am repeating anything that has been
    said before but I could not summon up the energy to peruse 137 replies.
    But what I *really* hate is:
    
    None of them are.
    It's different to.
    
    Since when has 'none' meaning 'not one' been able to take the plural
    form of a verb ? It would sound pretty silly to say "Not one of
    them are going".....
    
    Each to their own. Aaargghh ! Each to HIS/HER own !
    
    Or (and this one irritates me no end, especially when the news readers
    say it on the television), "One in ten people in this country are
    bald". !!!!!! Why can't they just say "One in ten people in this
    country *IS* bald".
    
    Sob sob sob,
    
    Paul V

    
    Also, how come Digital documentation has "indexes" instead of
    "indices"? Is this allowable in American grammar ?
    
    Paul V

Dear Paul V (son of Paul IV?),

	These things are self-correcting.  People who get worked up 
about usage that disagrees with their childhood training die of brain 
hemorrhage and the people who use those terms live to write dictionaries 
that validate them.   Relax.

					>>>==>PStJTT

P.S. Following your recommendation, I tried saying "All of a suddenly," 
     but people didn't understand it as well as "all of a sudden."

    
    
    re .140
    
    
    Aarrrggghhhh ! The pedant strikes ! Ok, I'll make myself clearer.
    we should not say "all of a sudden" but should say "suddenly" instead.
    No, not "all of a suddenly" just "suddenly". I know guess you're
    probably just trying to wind me up, but I'm a sucker for a wind
    up....
    
    Paul V

    What's wrong with "all of a sudden?"  It's an idiomatic phrase, no
    more unusual than "once upon a time."
                       
    					andrew

	Way I look at "all of a sudden" is this.   It's something that I'm sure
I use from time to time when speaking.   No harm there, we all know what it
means.   If I was writing something, then it might appear in the first draft,
but I hope I'd catch it and excise it on revision.   Not because it offends
against any grammatical rule, but because it's a stale phrase and "suddenly"
in most cases would capture the same meaning with more economy.

    I had always thought it was "all of the sudden", not that it matters a
    great deal, or makes more sense.  BTW, I agree with the distinction
    made in .-1 between 'proper' written forms of a language and the less
    proper usage of idioms and the like while speaking.  Virtually everyone
    is guilty of sloppy speech, while most write using a more correct form
    of the language.
    
    d
     

    re .144:
    
    I think that any sudden will do, it doesn't have to be a specific one. 
    
    	Jon

     What does "oral vs anal" have to do with rules of grammar?

    re: .146
    
    I see your point about the phrase being 'stale'.  As with several
    other usages of various words/phrases, "One person's stale is
    another person's sloppy."  I think what may have been misleading
    was your choice of the word stale.  When used in a grammatical
    sense ( for me anyway ) it seems to mean something leaning toward
    archaic.  What I was trying to say ( at least in part ) was
    that people tend to use different ( fresher? ) grammatical
    rules when they write than when they speak.
    
    duane
    

>     What does "oral vs anal" have to do with rules of grammar?

	I wasn't, of course, trying to be rude or pejorative.   It seems to me 
that there are a number of particular arguments that people get into where the 
rancour can be out of all proportion to the significance of the issue at hand.
These arguments have something in common: they are to do with reconciling the
disorder of the world with a set of rules.

	I would recommend Chapter 10 of the biologist Richard Dawkin's "The 
Blind Watchmaker", for a description of this anguish in zoological taxonomy.
To quote (without permission):

		Speaking personally, it is a problem that gives me almost
	physical discomfort when I am attempting the modest filing tasks that
	arise in my professional life: shelving my own books, and reprints of
	scientific papers that colleagues (with the kindest of intentions) send
	me; filing administrative papers; old letters, and so on.   Whatever
	categories one adopts for a filing system, there are always awkward
	items that don't fit, and the uncomfortable indecision leads me, I am
	sorry to say, to leave odd parpers out on the table sometimes for years
	at a time until it is safe to throw them away. ... I sometimes wonder 
	whether librarians ... are particularly prone to ulcers.

	It seems to me that the heat generated between the "stricts" and the 
"sloppies" on the question of English grammar has a similar root.   I am no
psychologist, but I believe that Freudians might explain these phenomena in
terms of some psychic drama re-animating issues unresolved at an early stage
in life.   I loosely refered to this as "oral vs anal", because I don't know any
better.

*

	Now CHANDLER2 suggests that my 'stale' = his 'sloppy'.   We aren't that
far apart perhaps, but let my clarify my position.

	If I write prose, I want every word, every phrase, every sentence to
count.   If a phrase doesn't pull its weight, it's out (or should be, if I 
notice it in time).   On balance, for most purposes I can imagine, "all of a
sudden" is not working hard enough.   It is clumsy, and hackneyed.   Many
phrases move on from the hackneyed stage to being accepted as common coinage,
but not, in my subjective opinion, this one.   I have no problems with the
grammar of the phrase, since I think of it as an atom.   But generally I
don't believe in breaking a grammatical rule unless there's a good reason.
(e.g. beginning previous sentence with 'But' can be OK when trying to pace an
argument).

	Do you agree with this, CHANDLER2?
*

	Lastly, one obvious point on this speech/prose issue.   We are
conducting this discussion in a novel medium: a sort of oral prose.   (Hence
we need smiley faces :-)   There has to be some people getting PhDs in
linguistics studying the language structures used in this sort of medium.   If
not, there's an opening.

Toodle-pip
Andrew

>	Lastly, one obvious point on this speech/prose issue.   We are
>  conducting this discussion in a novel medium: a sort of oral prose.   (Hence
>  we need smiley faces :-)   

Unfortunately, I don't have a smiley-face key on my terminal.  I used to 
use them, but I found that there were most often camouflage for 
something vile that I really meant, but wanted to pass off as harmless 
so I couldn't be taken to task for it.  I can't bring myself to use them 
when I really use humor, since that's too much like laughing at your own 
joke. (Or saying the other person is too stupid to figure it out for 
themselves.)


That aside -- I'm surprised Bonnie Randall hasn't weighed in with an 
analysis of the construction "all of a" in English.  It has a long and 
honored tradition.  There's "all of a sudden" :== "suddenly," "all of a
piece":=="the same," "all of an evening/morning/afternoon":=="it
happened this one evening/m/a," "all of a twist":== a book by Dickens.
(see above comment on smiley faces.)

The "all" doesn't seem to be used in the modern collective noun sense.  
It seems to imply that the item/event being spoken of is completely 
contained in the attribute named at the end of the phrase.  So "all of a 
sudden" means that the event is completely contained in the set of 
things which are sudden in nature.  I believe it came into common use 
through lower-class English slang. In any case, it's been in use so long 
that it's reasonably respectable.

In modern use, it has lost its meaning as a construction and means 
"suddenly" and as an excellent reply notes it is used as something to 
keep the mouth moving while the mind thinks ahead.  (Like the phrase "the 
wine dark sea" that constantly crops up in the Odyssey.  Innumerable 
scholars have been confounded trying to make sense of it.  It's just a 
phrase. It makes things go smoothly.  Relax.)

						>>>==>PStJTT

    re .150
    
>	Do you agree with this, CHANDLER2?

    Absitively ( posolutely ), I think!
    
    I didn't really think we were that far apart.  There are many
    things people do while speaking they would never do while writing.
    A couple leap readily like, to mind, like, you know...
    
    Anyway, back on track...
    Written forms of a language ( English anyway ) tend to be a
    lot more formal in general since there is less of a personal
    contact between the parties involved.  Grammatical 'dead wood'
    is tolerated to a far greater degree in spoken usage than in
    written usage.  Part of this tolerance is due to the personal
    contact/body language argument above, and part is due to the
    freer flowing nature of spoken words ( and the relative ease
    of being able to not listen for a second or two... ).  "All
    of a sudden" gives you a lot more time to wave your arms and
    adopt a different facial expression for emphasis than "suddenly",
    while "suddenly" is much more direct and 'hard-hitting' when
    used in print.  Besides, it _looks_ nicer in print than "all
    of a sudden".

    duane

    G'day,
    
    I was once reminded that I could be" All of a tizzwozz, or even
    all of a dither or maybe even all of a doodah, but NOT all of a
    sudden, Suddenly is the word!'
    
    Suddenly , I believe is an adverb, 'All of a Sudden' is not an
    adverbial phrase, so it would not appear to be interchangeable.
    
    Derek
    

      Re .153
      
>    Suddenly , I believe is an adverb, 'All of a Sudden' is not an
>    adverbial phrase, so it would not appear to be interchangeable.
      
      I disagree.  'All of a sudden' is an adverbial phrase; it answers
      the question 'how?'.   
      
           All of a sudden, the rains came.
      
      The rains came how?  Suddenly.  All of a sudden.  The word
      and the phrase are interchangeable, therefor they must both
      be used as the same part of speech.
      
      Dave C.

    Has somebody already raised the matter of
    
    	"The thing is is that ..."
    
    "The thing is" seems to have become a noun-like thing in its own right,
    requiring its own verb.
    
    I hear this all the time, far more often than I hear the correct
    
    	"The thing is that ..." 
    
    I suppose someone will now tell me that "The thing is that ..."
    is an abomination, but so be it.  In that case, "the thing is is
    that ..." is an abominable abomination.
    
    len.
    

>    	"The thing is (is) that ..."

	Another instance of an oralism unexpunged from prose.   In speech, I
would hazard that the "meaning" or "intent" is:

	(1) "I am about to say something: please listen to me." Like a throat-
clearing.
	(2) "We have just been discoursing in some domain.   I am about
to offer a new idea, which to me seems to dominate other issues previously dis-
cussed, or to refute some solution."
	
	The instrusion of a second "is" is interesting.   What part of speech
is "The thing is"?   From the foregoing, it's difficult to say, but I would
describe it as an oratorical blob, much superior in attention-grabbing than
"The thing", with its horrible hanging "ing".   "The thing is" leaves the 
speaker poised to leap into his main argument.   So "The thing is" becomes
a single noun-phrase, and a new "is" must be created to fill the gap.

>   ...annoying...

	No, not to me.   It just happens, and it's better excluded from prose.
But NOTESFILE, as we've discussed before, is a mongrel prose.

Andrew

    I have also heard numerous variations on this one, such as
    
    	The problem is is that ...
    
    This one is driving me bonkers, as I hear it used so often, and
    the correct usage, with no additional "is", so rarely, that sometimes
    I wonder which is really correct.
    
    len.
     

    Along the same lines:
    
          "What it is is...."
    
    It makes one's skin crawl.

    Re .last_few:
    
    This discussion reminds me of an exercise I was presented with as
    a highschooler.  By proper use of punctuation, make the folowing
    sentence make sense:
    
    "What is is what is not is not is not what is not not that that
    is is not that so?"
    
    Steve Kallis, Jr.
    
    Oh, yes.
    
    The solution:
    
    "What is, is; what is not, is not: is not `what is not' not `that
    that is' -- is not that so?"
    
    A little constipated, but at least it's ereasonably coherent.

    Re: .162
    
    	"What it is is confusing" looks correct without a comma.  Why
    would you put a comma between the two is's?
    
    Re: other annoying phrases
    
    	I got an offer in the mail yesterday for a credit scheme through
    which I could very easily borrow "up to $10,000 or more."
    
Lew Lasher

    I can't stand "In point of actual fact". Talk about stressing your
    point!!!!
    
    And of course there is tautology
    
    Reversing backwards
    
    Going out the exit
    
    Going in the entrance
    
    etc.....

    				"I feel badly"
                              

    
    	Speaking with my (_whatever_) hat on.
    
        - Dave K.
    

    
    Guess what ?
    
    John J
    

    G'day,
    
    
    .... and the reference to the crowd
    
    You people...
    
    as in "What are you people wanting?"
    
    djw
    

    
    What is it with you people ?
    
    John J
    

    "You people" doesn't annoy me when used in the right context.
    English is defective in that there is no difference (any more)
    between "you (singular)" and "you (plural)", as there is in most
    other languages.  Sometimes it is necessary to be able to make the
    distinction.
    
    Jeff.

    G'day,
    
    I suppose the OZ 'Yous' fits the bill - for example
    
    "Are yous going to the beach?" - there being more than one 'you' ie
    other people present.            
    
    I guess I dislike 'you people' because it lacks humanity. It ranks
    with 'you dogs' or 'you cows'. What's wrong with 'all of you'? 
    as in "Are all of you going to the beach?" or even "What is with
    all of you?" from -.a_couple,
    
    An OZ usage of 'but' struck a raw nerve once, but not now. It is
    often placed at the end of a sentence to raise a question or
    contradiction as in
    
    "It's sunny today"
    "There's a cold wind,but."
    
    djw

>>    "It's sunny today"
>>    "There's a cold wind,but."
    
	Sounds like an Australian Geordie ...

        In the U. S. military you can find two annoying phrases in one
        statement:

        

        "Listen up you people!"

    they're doing some sidewalk/stairwell work outside MR01...and they
    have a sign up telling people not to use the stairs, after the first
    one that said "Wet Cement" or some such (akin to "do not enter")
    was pretty much ignored.
    
    the current one says:
    
       FOR THOES WHO CANNOT READ

        <-------------------->
    
    I'm tempted to add another sign above it that says:
    
       FOR THOSE WHO CANNOT SPELL
                  ||
                  ||
                  \/

    Akin to THOES:  a while back, the papers over here had a
    photo of a large sign painted on a road which read SLOM
    
    

    I have a photograph of a real official-looking road sign that warns:
    
    	DANGEROUS INTERSCETION
    
    And, regarding tempting responses to posted signs, I always restrain
    myself when I see an
    
    	OUT OF ORDER
    
    sign from posting a
    
    	USE SORT
    
    len.
     

        In the town I live in (Amherst, NH) there are several road
        signs that say
        
                     WATCH
                      FOR      
                  PEDESTRIANS  
        
        but since the letters peel off, they've been vandalized to
        read
        
                     WATCH
                      FOR      
                   ED STRIAN 
        
        No one knows who Ed is, but we're all watching for him..
        
        Tom

    I think I caught on to the lack of IQ in a certain health club where
    I used to work out because of the signs in the women's locker room
    (who says all brawn and no brain is a myth?):
    
    Over the stairs:  WATCH YOU'RE STEP
    Near the showers: PLEASE SHOWER BEFORE USEING THE POOL
    
    and the funniest of all, near the lockers:
    
    FOR YOUR OWN SAFTY, PLEASE LOCK UP YOUR VALUALBES
    
    -Jody
    

    At the risk of repeating one that already in this file somewhere...
    
    
    In downtown Nashua there is a pedestrian crosswalk across four lanes
    of Main Street.  On the southbound side I happened to notice the
    following, painted in the street:
    
    
                       - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
                        / / / / / / / / / / / / / / /
                       - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
                                |  YIELD  |  YEILD  |
                                |         |         |
                                |         |         |
    
    I guess the painter wasn't sure which was correct, so he decided
    to paint one of each just to be sure. 
   

    Re .179: Well, you know how it is. Sometimes you just have to see
    it in print before you can remember which way it's spelled. (Let's
    just hope the painter doesn't start doing "DETOUR" signs - by the
    time you got past "DETURE" and "DETOOR", you'd have missed the turn!)
    
    -b

    
    Re: .170 & previous:
    
    The South solved the "you" singular/plural problem a long time ago.
    Didn't y'all know that?

Guess this is the right topic to mention the following sentence:

'THIS PAGE IS INTENTIONALLY LEFT BLANK'

What?

Alternatives:

'THIS PAGE IS ACCIDENTALLY FILLED WITH MEANINGLESS WORDS'

'THIS PAGE IS INTENTIONALLY LEFT WITH THESE WORDS ONLY'

or, most effective:
'"                                   "'
(Don't forget the double quotes ;^))
Arie

    Re: .182 (Intentionally left blank).
    
    Perhaps you would be happier if they included a complete sentence
    which truthfully spelled out why a particular page had no printing on
    it, "This page has not been used in order that the following
    right-hand page may be used as the beginning of a new chapter (section,
    or whatever)."

    re: .183
    
    Or even worse, as happened to us when the developers for a certain
    compiler pulled out a command after the books had gone to the
    printer, "This page, and the two following, are left blank because
    we had to delete three pages from the salt print and we weren't
    about to renumber the fifty pages following -- not to mention redo
    the index and table of contents." 

    --bonnie

re: .183

>    "This page has not been used in order that the following
>    right-hand page may be used as the beginning of a new chapter (section,
>    or whatever)."

I love this sentence -- it looks like one of Douglas Hofstader's self 
referrent sentences.  Something like "Whathisname the Cretan said `All Cretans 
are liars'".

If `this page has not been used', then why is there a sentence on it?  Doesn't 
having a sentence on it qualify as `being  used'?  Unless you are supposed to 
ignore the sentence, in which case why is it there?  And if you ignore it, 
does that mean that the sentence is really not there, in which case, then the 
page is `virtually' blank, in which case why is why is the page left blank, in 
which case, maybe we should put `This page left intentionally blank' on it, in 
which case ... 

Clay

    "Intentionally contains no information relevant to this document"
    
    

>    "Intentionally contains no information relevant to this document"
    
Or: "Since we had no useful information for this page, we now give you the
results of the Dutch football plays played on May 7/8, 1988:
     1-0
     2-3
     0-0
     0-3
     4-2"

Arie    

    G'day,
    
    There was one supplier of INS (Inertial navigation systems) that had
    the problem of blank pages - which in technical manuals must be
    identified to show that there is no information missing. They mostly
    used the 'ILB' phrase, but sometimes put in short anecdotes of some
    amusement to occupy the space. There was one I recall that detailed how
    an INS didn't _actually_ know where it was _ever_ until it arrived; for
    as soon as it had calculated where it had been and then where it had
    moved to, it had gone. 
    
    
    
    Perhaps an idea to break up the monotony of Systems Manuals??
    
    djw

    Once we tried putting "Notes" and a little pencil logo at the top of
    the blank pages at the ends of the chapters in a user's guide, to
    indicate that you were supposed to take notes, jot down comments, or
    whatever in that space.  We thought it might be useful for people
    trying to figure out how to use the language.  
    
    Believe it or not, we got reader's comment cards wanting to know
    what was going on, did we get some pages from Ed Services textbooks
    mixed up or something?
    
    --bonnie

    Recently overheard "Is this doable?"
    

    Of course it's English. It sure ain't French. 
    
    Now then, if you're asking if it is standard, dictionary English, then
    no, it is not. "Doable" is a colloquialism, meaning roughly the same as
    "feasible." You'll hear it a lot in American English these days.
    
    	Jon

    
    And if it's knot , it's undoable
                 
    John J      (so what do you know from funny)

    I found the word "administrativia" in the EUROPE::POSIX_ADA NOTESfile
    the other day

    You should have left it there.

    I usually see it as "administrivia". I consider this to be
    a witty and harmless neologism.
    
    --- jerry

Or, for those who manage Verdi operas, "administraviata".

    
    And from the Department of Redundancy Department....
    
    	My personal opinion is....
    
    	Personally, I believe....
    
    
    If it's your opinion or belief, it's probably personal!!!!

    
    
    A typical teenager/parent discussion...
            
    	Teenager:   And then he went, you know, ".....".
                                ====  =========  
     
    	Parent:	    No, I don't know.  Where did he go?  
       

    
    When " and so he goes '.....' "
    
    is used for " and so he said '.....' " .
    
    
    Then again , why someone should 'go' "dot dot dot dot dot" beats
    me .
    
    John J
    

    What "he" was doing was writing dots on a piece of paper. The sentence,
    "And so he goes '.....'", was the author writing a series of five dots.
    It's all very straight forward. I don't understand the problem.

    re: .199, .200, .201
    
    The "....." indicated ANY statement (fill in your own statement).
    
    What I was trying to emphasize (with underlines) was that "he went"
    shouldn't replace the proper "he said" in the English language.
    "He went" indicates an action like he went to the store.  "He said"
    is telling a third party about a dialogue that occurred.
    
    Hope this clears up the confusion.  Sorry that I was unclear in
    my first note!
    

    And then, he goes, "I thought the parental reaction, pretending not to
    understand, was a lot more annoying than using 'go' for 'say'.  How
    does that old song go anyway?"
     

    
  > What I was trying to emphasize (with underlines) was that "he went"
  > shouldn't replace the proper "he said" in the English language.

    Well, there you go again...

    In a similar vein, why do people, when quoting use "he said"
    rather than "he asked" when the quoted speach is a obviously
    a question ?
    
    e.g.
    
    "What time is it ?", he said.
    
       rather than

    "What time is it ?", he asked.

    re:.205
    
    It seems to me that if the quote contains a question mark then
    "asked" would be somewhat redundant, no?
    
    While "say/said" has a more specific usage indicating a statement
    or declaration, it also has a more general usage of "expressing
    in words" which would include questions as well as statements.
    
    --- jerry

    
    "Are we all going dotty ?", he went questioningly .
    
    John J

    re .207
    
    "Please bring back Tom Swiftlies," he questioningly demanded hurriedly.

    Re .170  (Sorry for the delay; I couldn't read DEC notes before
              joining DEC....)
    
    titled:  -< With my pedant's hat on >-
    
    OK, I'll byte.  Who's your pedant?

    	As someone who is slightly blue-green colour blind, and with a wife who
    likes turquoise, obviously I should have been born Breton...

    Re .151 (Sorry for the long delay, I was researching the subject...):
    
>keep the mouth moving while the mind thinks ahead.  (Like the phrase "the 
>wine dark sea" that constantly crops up in the Odyssey.  Innumerable 
>scholars have been confounded trying to make sense of it.  It's just a 
>phrase. It makes things go smoothly.  Relax.)
    
    It seems these "scholars" are not familiar with preclassic Greek
    litterature. In pre or early classic time, the Greeks had not yet got
    the notion of colour as we know it today. The Greek colour adjectives,
    like "erythros", "kuanos", "chloros", etc... are found in Greek texts
    only from late classic or hellenistic times onward. Earlier, what was
    important in a description was not the colour, but the aspect, the
    consistence, and so on. The French translation of Odyssey by Victor
    Berard avoids this trap by using the words "la mer VINEUSE", which
    means approximately wine-like, not wine-coloured. This also says a lot
    about the aspect and quality of ancient Greek wine...
    	The notion of colour is not as precise and definite between various
    languages as it would first seem. For example, in Breton the same word
    designates the colours that we know as green and blue. In the Breton
    context, they are seen as different nuances of the same basic colour.
    It does not mean that the Bretons are colour-blind, only that the
    concepts are slightly different in their tongue and its context.
    			Denis.

    Re .211, .212: Sorry, I deleted .210 and reentered it to correct an
    incorrect spelling, and Dave entered .211 in the mean time.
    		Denis.

    re: .212
    
    Several Native American tribes agree with the Bretons in assigning
    blue and green as different shades of the same trouble.  
    
    As I recall from my linguistics professor, who had been part of
    the team that designed an alphabet to allow the Cheyenne language
    to be written down for the first time, the color groups in
    Cheyenne are something like:
    
    the blue-greens (grass/tree colors)
    the browns (earth/dry grass colors)
    the blacks (sky/cloud/night colors)
    the fire colors (red and orange)
    
    I'm afraid I don't remember the words after all these years but
    they were taken from nature -- so the word for 'deer' in one
    context could refer to the animal and in another to something that
    was the same color as a deer.
    
    --bonnie

    The same thing is true of Hopi (or is it Navaho? My memory is pretty
    dreadful today), which has only one word for the whole blue-green
    spectrum. That word is "turquoise."
    
    Also for what it's worth, in Japan the traffic lights signifying "go"
    are not green, but blue. However, having been there, I can assure you
    that they are the same color that they are in other parts of the world
    that I've been to. At least to my color perceptions.
    
    	Jon

    There is an excellent monograph on color terms whose title I
    unfortunately cannot remember.  They used a set of ceramic tiles
    mounted on a board in a spectrum along one dimension and with
    varying amounts of saturation along the other to elicit color terms
    from native speakers of many languages, asking them to point to
    the group of tiles which corresponded to each color, and pick the
    one tile which most typlified each color.
    
    	Red End				Blue End
    	+---------------------------------------+	most white
    	|					|
    	|					|
    	|	hundreds of tiles		|
    	|					|
    	|					|
    	+---------------------------------------+	most black
    
    The conclusions were:
    
    All languages have "basic" color terms (e.g. "red").  All have
    "derived" terms (e.g. "scarlet" is completely contained within
    red, "salmon" is the name of a thing, "red-orange" is derived
    from two other terms, etc.).
    
    Any reasonably competent speaker can come up with terms for all
    the colors in the tile set, but most of the terms are derived terms.
    
    It seems that the basic terms have some physiological reality:
    the same few tiles are picked as the "most red" by speakers of
    all languages.  Further, the boundaries of colors are not arbitrary.
    Only certain borders were picked.
    
    It seems that if a language has only two basic terms, speakers
    divide the color tiles along a line into "light" and "dark" tiles.
    If the language has three terms, the tiles are divided into three
    groups by insertion of a "Red" group between the light and dark
    group in the middle:
    	
    	Red End				Blue End
    	+---------------------------------------+	most white
    	|			White		|
    	|   /-----------\			|
    	|--<	Red	 >----------------------|
    	|   \___________/	Black		|
    	|					|
    	+---------------------------------------+	most black
    
    Each increase in the number of basic color terms added one new
    outlined group of tiles by spliting a previous group or adding a
    new one on the border between two others.  For each number of
    basic terms, the diagram was almost the same: one never found
    languages which subtle distinctions in one area but only gross ones
    elsewhere.
    
    Thus languages have only the following kinds of basic terms:
    
    1.	Dark and Light (or Black and White)
    
    2.  The above plus: Red-Orange
    
    3.	Those from 2. plus Blue-Green
    
    4.	Those from 3. plus Yellow
    
    5.  etc. (e.g. later steps split Red-Orange and Blue-Green)
    
    English is towards the bottom of this list, but does not split as
    finely as some other languages.  The splits we don't do are blue 
    (and green) into light and dark versions (like "red" is to "pink").
    
    The monograph came out in the seventies, and shouldn't be too hard
    to track down at a university library.
    
    			-John Bishop

    Geoffrey Sampson, in Liberty and Language (OUP, 1978/79?), cites some
    South-East Asian language in which there are three colour terms,
    roughly equivalent to 'green', 'brown' and 'wet'. We can easily
    say 'but wetness is distinct from colour'; in that language, however,
    the three words were of a kind.
    
    I find this hard to understand, but Sampson was a scholar of Vietnamese
    - which leads me to think that his observation is worthy of note.
    
    b

    A phrase which I find very annoying in restaurants is to see an
    advertized special of "Roast Beef with au jus"   Gag.
    
    
    --  Tracy

    >"Roast Beef with au jus"
    
    What kind of advertisement is that?  It should be:
    
    "Roast Beef with au jus juice."

    	In France it is usually just "Rosbif au jus".

    >     "Roast Beef with au jus juice."
    
    How illiterate!  That should be "Roast Beef with au jus gravy."
                                                            -----
    
    						Ann B.

    Re .220, .221
    
    OK, roast rosbif beef with au jus gravy.

    and tossed salad with vinegar-ette dressing.

Another piece of transnational tautology I've seen here in the US:

	"Today's soup du jour"

John

re .225

But "Today's soup du jour" is reasonable.  One could also talk about
yesterday's soup du jour.   Or tomorrow's, or last Tuesday's.   What?
You say you don't need the "du jour"?  You can talk about last Tuesday's
soup?  Sure, but are you talking about last Tuesday's navy bean soup,
last Tuesday's onion soup, or last Tuesday's soup of the day?

I don't think "Today's soup du jour" is redundant (though it *is*
overcooked).

Dave C.

"Today's soup of the day" as an item on a menu would sound a little strange, 
and that's what "Today's soup du jour" means.

I suppose my main objection is to the use of a part-English, part-French,
phrase -- "soupe du jour" (or "soup of the day") would be fine. 
 
John

	Re: last few ....

	Taking a foreign word or phrase, and incorporating it
	(often modified or mangled) into everyday usage, is 
	part of a fine American tradition.

	Other examples are "cheeseburger" and "maitre d'"

	Jim

    	Ahh yes. I  had forgotten that the cheeseburger originaly came from
    the medieval German town of Cheeseburg. Or should that go into back
    formations? I suspect that the average English speaker may not know
    where wiener schnitzels come from either, even if they pronounce it 
    "veener".

Customer to waitron: "What's the soup du jour?"
Waitron: "That's the soup of the day."

    Soup isn't the only thing that can be "du jour."  On menus you'll
    see crepe du jour, special du jour, plate du jour, bar specials du
    jour. 
    
    Around here we have the crisis du jour and the firedrill du jour. 
    
    Or, as a waitress in a local establishment informed us when we
    inquired about the chef's special du jour, "This week it's grilled
    salmon steak."
    
    --bonnie

    How about   SHRIMP SCAMPI ?????

    Redundant?  Yes, but I'm not sure what a good alternative might be. 
    The crustaceans the Italians call scampi are not identical to those we
    call shrimp.  Of course, neither are they always prepared in a garlic,
    wine and butter sauce.  What "shrimp scampi" is trying to say, then, is
    "shrimp cooked in the way Italians often prepare scampi".

    I saw "Shrimp a la scampi" on a menu at a rather nice restaurant I
    was at recently.  I'm not sure if that's an improvement, however.
    
    --bonnie

    English, French, and Italian all in one phrase.  What could possibly
    be more clear?

    > I saw "Shrimp a la scampi" on a menu at a rather nice restaurant I
    > was at recently.  
    
    And the menu at the Italian Garden has "Fettuccini ala scampi" but you
    should never trust a chef to name a dish. 
    
    As I understand it, delinquent French boys who fail in lower school are
    the ones who are sent to cooking school and become our gourmet chefs. 
    

    re 4.216:
    
    The 1971 book has been reissued, and is reviewed in this month's
    Scientific American: _Basic_Color_Terms_ by Brent Berlin and Paul
    Kay, 1991. $12.95.
    			-John Bishop