Lanny Heidbreder (@usage) 's Twitter Profile
Lanny Heidbreder

@usage

Grammar, spelling, pronunciation, and other English usage issues with a minimum of pretension and maxima of opinion and snark

ID: 25940112

linkhttps://twitter.com/75th calendar_today23-03-2009 02:57:52

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Dear lord, people: "Phenomenon" is singular; "Phenomena" is plural. And that "Mahna Mahna" joke you're about to make is idiotic. Shut up.

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I recently had a revelation: "Agenda" is plural. Now I have a hard time writing e-mails to corporate douches that sound right to both of us.

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It occurs to me now that I've been using “web site” — with a lowercase ‘w’ — this whole time. That's the worst possible option.

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I like split infinitives, but I don't like Star Trek’s. “To go boldly” is a better contrast to “where no one has [even] gone before”.

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Note to self: Start using "millionnaire" instead of "millionaire". It doesn't hurt anyone and it's oh-so-slightly more intelligent.

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I'm disappointed to learn that nouns functioning as adjectives are not, as I believed, considered a special kind of adjective.

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“In your best interests” is clearly generally preferred to “In your best interest”, but I rather prefer the latter. Is either more correct?

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You'll never go wrong by never using the word "proverbial". It's idiotic when misused and superfluous when used correctly.

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Any English teacher who teaches against redundancy but also uses “Compare and contrast” in his essay prompts is a hypocrite.

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“All-Star Team” makes sense, since it its members are all stars. “All-State”, “All-Region”, and the like do not make quite so much sense.

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“With his neat, scraped back hair, Bosman, now 56, is enthusiastic….” That sentence could use a discretionary hyphen. http://is.gd/5ULme

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I just saw a commercial brag that its product was “ALL all-natural”. I choose to believe that it was making fun of meaningless buzzwords.