With the recent release of the new Hobbit movie, The Desolation of Smaug, a lot of people have been talking about the pronunciation of the titular dragon’s name. The inclination for English speakers is to pronounce it like smog, but Tolkien made clear in his appendixes to The Lord of the Rings that the combination […]
I have a new post up on Visual Thesaurus about the use, misuse, and history of the word electrocute. Some usage commentators today insist that it be used only to refer to death by electric shock; that is, you can’t say you’ve been electrocuted if you lived to tell the tale. But the history, unsurprisingly, […]
My last post, “12 Mistakes Nearly Everyone Who Writes about Grammar Mistakes Makes”, drew a lot of comments, some supportive and some critical. But no point drew as much ire as my claim that irregardless is a word. Some stated flatly, “Irregardless is not a word.” One ignorantly demanded, “Show me a dictionary that actually […]
