http://www.arrantpedantry.com Sat, 20 Jun 2009 04:08:14 +0000 http://backend.userland.com/rss092 en Sorry I haven't posted in so long (I know I say that a lot)---I've been busy with school and things. Anyway, a couple months back I got a comment on an old post of mine, and I wanted to address it. I know it's a bit lame to respond to ... http://www.arrantpedantry.com/2009/06/19/linguists-and-straw-men/ I know I'm a week late to the party, but I've been thinking a lot about National Grammar Day and want to blog about it anyway. Please forgive me for my untimeliness. First off, I should say for those who don't know me that I work as a copy editor. ... http://www.arrantpedantry.com/2009/03/10/reflections-on-national-grammar-day/ I just finished filing my federal taxes with H&R Block's free e-filing (which I highly recommend, by the way), and at the end I encountered some rather confusing language. After submitting my return, I came to a page asking if I consented to let H&R Block use my information for ... http://www.arrantpedantry.com/2009/01/27/do-you-agree-that-we-ask-for-your-consent/ I know this topic has been addressed in detail elsewhere (see goofy's post here for example), but a friend recently asked me about it, so I thought I'd take a crack at it. It's fairly straightforward: there are the complex, implicit rules that people have been following for over a ... http://www.arrantpedantry.com/2008/12/23/less-and-fewer/ Recently I received an e-mail from my bank informing me that they had experienced some system outages. What struck me was that the e-mail kept referring to "impacted systems," and it conjured up some strange mental images. A lot of people hate the verb impact because they say that it should ... http://www.arrantpedantry.com/2008/09/06/impacted/ Just a quick update to say that I've redone the design for my Better Living Through Syntax shirts. Now it actually looks like a proper X-bar structure instead of a hastily drawn tree-thingy. Check it out! Keep in mind that the shirt colors there are just examples---you can choose your ... http://www.arrantpedantry.com/2008/08/26/new-and-improved-shirts/ The other day at work I came across a fantastic formation I'd never seen before: "newest fangled." It was from a speech given back in 1938 by J. Reuben Clark at Brigham Young University, where the law school is named for him. The speech was pretty formal and serious, so ... http://www.arrantpedantry.com/2008/08/07/the-newest-fangled-backformation/ This is a subject I've wanted to write about for quite some time, but the recent movie WALL-E has reminded me of the issue once again, and that is this: some people seem to think that logos are the ultimate guide to the orthography of some names. Now, Bill Walsh has ... http://www.arrantpedantry.com/2008/07/13/logography/ Recently I got a letter from my phone company informing me that my area code will be switching to 10-digit dialing sometime next year. Several times the letter mentioned that we will have to start dialing "10-digits." It was very consistent---every time the numeral 10 was followed by the noun ... http://www.arrantpedantry.com/2008/06/02/numbers-and-hyphens/ First off, let me apologize for not writing anything in a while. I've been busy with preparations for grad school and a new baby and haven't gotten around to working on any of the ideas I've got bouncing around. I promise I'll work on something soon. But for now, you'll have ... http://www.arrantpedantry.com/2008/05/20/new-store-new-products/