September 19, 2006

Lo-fi pedantry.

Posted by apostropher

There are about ten million websites that should be required to have this posted in their masthead. Roughly nine million of them are on myspace.

memorize it, dumbass

Via freakgirl.

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Comments
1

Oh, that is awesome. They should add some of my favorites:

Its vs. it's
Effect vs. affect
Wrack vs. rack

Posted by: Gaijin Biker at September 19, 2006 09:21 PM
2

I have to admit, I didn't get what was wrong about "PIN number" and "HIV virus" at first. Arguably, those have become standard usage.

Now, if you'll excuse me, I have to get back to work on the TTP project.

Posted by: Gaijin Biker at September 19, 2006 09:41 PM
3

Oh, if only it included the following:
"Excellant is not excellent"

Posted by: Dug at September 19, 2006 10:03 PM
4

Roughly nine million of them are on myspace

And one of the remaining one million is written by Matthew Yglesias.

Which reminds me: This comment is way up there in my list of all-time unfogged faves.

Of course, I guess I sort of have a thing for SCMT.

Alas, SCMT loves another.

Posted by: M/tch M/lls at September 19, 2006 11:22 PM
5

What word is a synonym for misplace?

Hint: it only has one "o."

P.S. I got your ebola message again.

Posted by: John Johnson at September 20, 2006 02:56 AM
6

"ebola message" s/b "mom"

Posted by: Clownæsthesiologist at September 20, 2006 05:57 AM
7

Oh great, now the amine of my middle-school-english-teacher-mother is going to be popping up everywhere, tryin to correct my grammar.

Posted by: Jon at September 20, 2006 10:07 AM
8

The "I before E except after C" rule has many deficiencies.

Posted by: Ashley at September 20, 2006 12:11 PM
9

You have to add, "or when sounded like A, as in neighbor or weigh."

Posted by: Gaijin Biker at September 20, 2006 12:22 PM
10

JJ, yeah the regex I had put in to try to let your site through wasn't stopping other dot-info sites, so I went back to just blocking them all. Unfortunately, aside from the one ping you just added, my blacklist shows roughly 2000 spam comments/trackbacks blocked off of the plain dot-info entry since it was re-added about 3 months ago.

I'm more than willing to go and add the URL to your comments after they have posted, though.

Posted by: apostropher at September 20, 2006 02:07 PM
11

Read a little more closely, GB. . .

Posted by: Ashley at September 20, 2006 02:55 PM
12

Or for deities, atheists, and other weirdos.

Posted by: LizardBreath at September 20, 2006 06:12 PM
13

Eh, it was 3 in the morning here when I posted.

Posted by: Gaijin Biker at September 20, 2006 06:45 PM
14

May I suggest that it's definitely not definately?

Posted by: PutzheadTom at September 22, 2006 09:50 AM
15

Absolutely. Also, the country is real, but it's spelled Israel.

Posted by: apostropher at September 22, 2006 10:02 AM
16

Call it what you want, as long as the Izzys continue to live/squabble there with the Palis.

Posted by: PutzheadTom at September 22, 2006 01:40 PM
17

Dependant is in dedrawer. "Dependent" means something else entirely.

Posted by: PutzheadTom at September 23, 2006 10:49 AM
18

The proscription against "PIN number", "ATM machine", "HIV virus", etc. is a form of hypercorrection.

When an acronym enters our language and becomes commonly understood, it tends to be assimilated as one particular part of speech -- and not necessarily the part of speech the coiners intended. An assimilated acronym may even be used appropriately by people who do not know what the letters originally stood for. (Quick -- what do "JPEG", "scuba", and "amphetamine" stand for?)

Because we use "HIV" as an adjective in so many other phrases -- "HIV advocacy", "HIV vaccine", "HIV education", "HIV patient" -- the acronym is widely understood by lay people when used as an adjective, so that when a lay person wants to talk about the actual virus, "HIV virus" is the way to do so.

This repetition is a signal that "HIV" has entered the language as a 'word' in its own right, and not as three separate letters.

The usage of "HIV virus" -- an adjective modifying a noun -- is even accepted in the medical literature -- examples can be found at

http://www.hopkins-aids.edu/publications/report/mar02_6.html

and

http://infectious-diseases.jwatch.org/cgi/content/full/1999/1101/2

Posted by: Heath at September 23, 2006 12:50 PM
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