We'd be dead. Can't get paid if you're dead.

Mal ,'Serenity'


Natter 69: Practically names itself.  

Off-topic discussion. Wanna talk about corsets, duct tape, or physics? This is the place. Detailed discussion of any current-season TV must be whitefonted.


-t - Feb 10, 2012 12:02:27 pm PST #21326 of 30001
I am a woman of various inclinations and only some of the time are they to burn everything down in frustration

That's wonderful.


Steph L. - Feb 10, 2012 12:08:03 pm PST #21327 of 30001
this mess was yours / now your mess is mine

That's awesome.


Ginger - Feb 10, 2012 12:08:26 pm PST #21328 of 30001
"It didn't taste good. It tasted soooo horrible. It tasted like....a vodka martini." - Matilda

Is 100 years ago still too recent?

As I understand it, it's been a gradual shift in common usage, so that by the '30s, there were enough people saying "I feel nauseous" to make Prof. Strunk say, "Ur doin it wrong." and for E.B. White to keep it in commonly misused words and phrases in his 1959 revision. I am conservative about adopting usage changes based on popular misuse, but then again, I'm a pedant.


Kat - Feb 10, 2012 12:16:40 pm PST #21329 of 30001
"I keep to a strict diet of ill-advised enthusiasm and heartfelt regret." Leigh Bardugo

They left out "hopefully" on the common grammar mistakes. I hope it was just an oversight. (yes. I know that ship has sailed).

Moot is one that pisses me off. I have always used it to mean able to be debated endlessly without hopes of resolution. Which yes, I guess does mean it is not important. Sigh.


§ ita § - Feb 10, 2012 12:17:49 pm PST #21330 of 30001
Well not canonically, no, but this is transformative fiction.

it's been a gradual shift in common usage

It's in Webster's 1913. That's why I don't get why it's an issue in 2012. It feels like that hurdle has been leapt already.

I can be anal with the best of them, but if I don't have any living relatives that lived during the official change in usage, I'm pretty much good with letting it slide.

Anyway, now I'm preoccupied with how brachiosauruses have sex.


Tom Scola - Feb 10, 2012 12:18:15 pm PST #21331 of 30001
Remember that the frontier of the Rebellion is everywhere. And even the smallest act of insurrection pushes our lines forward.

Can “data” be a mass noun now? Please?


P.M. Marc - Feb 10, 2012 12:19:41 pm PST #21332 of 30001
So come, my friends, be not afraid/We are so lightly here/It is in love that we are made; In love we disappear

I do not correct people's spoken English, although when some people say, "I feel nauseous," I think, "You're certainly having that effect on me." I'll probably always change "I feel nauseous" to "I feel nauseated" in written copy. After all, I still care about the distinction between different from and different than.

That's so hot.

What? I mean it.


Ginger - Feb 10, 2012 12:23:29 pm PST #21333 of 30001
"It didn't taste good. It tasted soooo horrible. It tasted like....a vodka martini." - Matilda

The good ship Hopefully may have sailed, but I wasn't on it. I'll admit that mute for moot is one of the things I have corrected in public. A colleague, who was theoretically a writer, kept using it over and over in staff meetings, until I started to have uncontrollable eye rolls. Not only was she pronouncing it wrong, but also she was also using it mainly in reference to points she didn't want to talk about, such as why she misspelled someone's name in an article.


amych - Feb 10, 2012 12:27:39 pm PST #21334 of 30001
Now let us crush something soft and watch it fountain blood. That is a girlish thing to want to do, yes?

Yeah, mute for moot is simply the wrong word.

Nauseous and hopefully, at least for me, are more in the category of "Strunk and White is a shit guide." t duck-n-run


Ginger - Feb 10, 2012 12:33:00 pm PST #21335 of 30001
"It didn't taste good. It tasted soooo horrible. It tasted like....a vodka martini." - Matilda

are more in the category of "Strunk and White is a shit guide."

I can't betray my first love.