"Alot": Something the Internet informed me about. (1 Viewer)

[Mike Frezon]

Another county heard from...who actually reads Playboy magazine!

 

[Dennis Nicholls]

Actually I have a problem here.....

Is "Dennis" an ancient proper name? It is a derivative of "Dionysus", the god of wine and drunkenness. The patron saint of Paris is Saint Denis. So should it be "Dennis' " or "Dennis's" ?

 

[Dennis Nicholls]

Actually I always wanted to open a delicatessen, and name it after the spiritual leader of Tibet....



The "Deli Llama".

 

[Lew Crippen]

Reading a post this morning reminded me how much I dislike noone.

 

[Scott L]

Agreed 100%. Was taught never to use "a lot" in college, among other terms such as "very" but that was the one that stood out in my mind the most.

Evolution of language is definitely needed, if anything just to shut you spelling nazis up! We still don't have a proper word for "y'all" or "you guys," and avoiding use of "themselves" also ticked me off in college.

*searches for grammar check button

 

[MarkHastings]

Yay! That means you love everyone.

 

[Jeff Ulmer]

It certainly helps in understanding the phrase "fermet la bush"

I attribute my poor spelling primarily 1.) to a crappy keyboard 2.) laziness by guessing.

The keyboard (and poor tyoming skills < see? I was trying to "p") contributes to dyslexia.

I'll admit that many mistakes other people make do drive me nuts, and give the impression that these people are simply uneducated and don't know any better - which points out the importance of communicating properly, which includes spelling and grammar.

This thread is gr8. (and it doesn't help that "gr8" isn't flagged as a problem!)

 

[BrettGallman]

This really isn't a grammar or spelling thing, but here's something else that bothers me:

The way in which people constantly confuse "irony" with "coincidence." For example, I watching the Yanks-Sox game the other day, and the announcer remarked that Randy Johnson had "ironically" broken some record formerly held by his own pitching coach. This is not ironic at all...it's just coincidence. There's no reason NOT to expect Randy Johnson to break his own pitching coach's record. In fact, irony rarely exisits at all in real life, outside of cosmic irony (and even that's pushing it sometimes). Most things are simply coincidence (see: Alanis Morrisette's song "Ironic"). Irony isn't some random thing like coincidence often is, as it's a very deliberate tool employed by an author and relies on a relationship between a reader's expectations or knowledge and a text, which is kind of hard to pull off in life.

 

[Jeff Ulmer]

How about "deja vu all over again"? If you want to use foreign phrases, why not learn what they mean before being redundant?

 

[MarkHastings]

but what if you expereince deja vu for the second time in a row? Wouldn't that be deja vu all over again?

 

[Jeff Gatie]

"(It's like) deja vu all over again" is actually a quote from the infamously redundant/ironic/scatterbrained Yogi Berra, Hall Of Fame Yankee catcher/philosopher who is the source of other gems such as:

"It ain't over till it's over"
"Baseball is 90% mental -- the other half is physical"
"A nickel isn't worth a dime today."
"You should always go to other people's funerals; otherwise, they won't come to yours."

Being that "deja vu all over again" is arguably his most famous flub, it is usually used in honor of Yogi, not because the speaker does not understand the meaning of the foreign phrase.

 

[Holadem]

Favorite yogism: "Nobody goes there anymore, it's too crowded".

--
H

 

[Patrick Sun]

But obviously your caps-lock key isn't broken, but you fail to capitalize properly...

 

[Jeff Ulmer]

That is highly doubful considering the only Yogi many of those who would use the phrase would even remotely be aware of is a cartoon character. I believe it's simply because people just don't have a clue what they are talking about 90% the time. The other half they are just lazy.

 

[MarkHastings]

I swear this is the honest truth!!! I went to a restaurant with my parents (one that we hadn't been to in a long time) and my mother said the following:

"Wow! We haven't been here since the last time we were here."

LOL

Well, I knew what she meant, but that was such a CLASSIC moment in mom's history. I'll never let her live that one down.

 

[Jeff Gatie]

To be fair Jeff, the quote, along with Yogi's "it ain't over till it's over" has become part of the public lexicon, like "round up the usual suspects" or "that's a horse of a different color" so that even those who have no idea who Yogi is (or who/what Casablanca, The Wizard of Oz or Shakespeare are for that matter) may be using it without a formal recognition of it's origin. It is one of those things tha has just become a part of pop culture, without the person knowing the exact history of the quote, it continues on.

I know I use it all the time and even with my rudimentary knowledge of French (err, none!) I know the redundancy of the statement.

 

[James D S]

It's correct to leave off the 's' after the apostrophe when the word following begins with an 's', as in "Barry Bonds' steroids." Otherwise, you add the 's' at the end, a la "Barry Bonds's amphetamine tablet."

This does not hold true for words in their plural form. For those words, always use an apostrophe without the 's'.

 

[Holadem]

And then you have those who use the word "irony" to mean... absolutely nothing. The latest example being from none other than the fearless leader of the free world himself, in the much publicised phrase:

"See the irony is that what they need to do is get X to get Y to stop doing this shit and it's over."

(X and Y obviously stand for current event stuff).

What qualifies as "ironic" is anyone's guess.

--
H

 

[MarkHastings]

 

[cafink]

Mark, it sounds like you're disagreeing with Brett but your quote seems to be making the exact same point that he was.

Also, where exactly is that quote from? It's difficult to comment on that sort of thing if you don't cite a source.