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Ciel - You're welcome. Thanks for the smile...
Regarding your last paragraph: all of those, and the (dis)agreement of tenses is a pet peeve of mine. Then there are the times, many times, when I will intentionally break the rules or when typos may sneak into my work/comments due to vision issues.
posted by
Sea_Gypsy
on September 2, 2020 at 8:18 PM
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I like to ask why. It drives many crazy. They don't want to have to think and vocalize.
posted by
Annicita
on September 1, 2020 at 5:08 PM
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Word play is fun and great for the brain. Fizzle once meant fart quietly.
Language tends to change over the decades. What was once gay now has a very different meaning.
https://www.rd.com/list/words-changed-meaning/
posted by
Sherri_G
on September 1, 2020 at 8:40 AM
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Re: Sea Gypsy,
Especially us writers! I never heard about 'cutting the muster' before, thanks for sharing that!
Self-editing before posting is another thing that especially writers could be doing, but don't--as if it isn't in the least important. But sloppy writing suggests sloppy thinking, and that the writer isn't all that educated. The reader might almost instantly correct that equation, but that also takes a moment, and like the writer, the readers might not bother to go there.
And don't even get me started on I/we and me/us. Or commas.
posted by
Ciel
on September 1, 2020 at 5:53 AM
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Ciel - Indeed. What a gratifying post for me to read.
We should try to express things as well as we are capable. But I often self-edit while speaking or writing due to one reason or another due to poor English phrasing. I enjoyed the examples you gave of people misusing phrases. Another one is: "cut the mustard," which of course, no one does. It was from when a troop achieved excellent performance in something like a room inspection and then was allowed "cut" having to stand for a formal muster; thus, cutting muster.
posted by
Sea_Gypsy
on August 31, 2020 at 10:43 PM
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