Thursday 11 October 2007
Egnarance is bliss.
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I see so many abuses of the English language when browsing YouTube that, although I'll never become impervious, I wouldn't usually consider such occurrences noteworthy.
The irony of this comment, however, made me chuckle:
A noble and correct sentiment, egregiously delivered. Admit it, even for YouTube – that's a cracker.
P.S. You can see the video and the comment here. The video is not relevant to this post but involves a teacher who is either incredibly stupid or incredibly stupid and racist.
The irony of this comment, however, made me chuckle:
A noble and correct sentiment, egregiously delivered. Admit it, even for YouTube – that's a cracker.
P.S. You can see the video and the comment here. The video is not relevant to this post but involves a teacher who is either incredibly stupid or incredibly stupid and racist.
Labels: punctuation, spelling, YouTube
posted by Gez at 11:48 pm
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9 Comments:
Just realised that two out of the last three posts have contained the word egregious. Even though the posts were by different authors, is that overuse?
It's a cracking word, mind.
I think GrammarBlog contributors have been obsessed with this word since it featured on League of Gentlemen ("Would you say you were an egregious person, Pauline?".
Am I right?
You're not wrong.
Ooooooo, non-closing of brackets, I hate that.
A few years back we really were overusing it; our Yorkshire 'chum' Andy was especially guilty. Let's not panic - two out of three is a rarity. It is a great word though.
This is totally unrelated to your post, but how do you feel about the use/misuse of the word "data"?
The electronic time clock at work reads "Data is accepted" after I swipe my ID badge, tell it whether I'm punching in or out, tell it whether I took a lunch break or not, and tell it what department to charge. That strikes me as more than one piece of data, therefore it should read "Data are accepted". It seems some dictionaries are okay with "data is" but I cannot bring myself to accept it.
I would accept 'data is', purely because I subscribe to the theory that language evolves according to the inexorable tide of modern usage. It's a bit like 'email'; with familiarity and ubiquity it has usurped 'E-mail', whether grammatical sticklers like it or not.
Tom, you know the expression, "hell in a hand-basket"? That's you, that is.
You love it.
Actually, data is always plural. The singular is datum.
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