In the not-too-distant past English used the pronoun “him” to refer to individuals of unspecified gender in phrases such as “Everyone is entitled to his own opinion.” This understandably annoys some people, who prefer “Everyone is entitled to his or … Continue reading
The eternal debate on when decades start In the comic above, Ponytail accuses White Hat of being pedantic. Hah. I’ll show you pedantic. The 21st century began on the first day of 2001. This has nothing whatsoever to do with … Continue reading
Not having young children, I was unaware that this was going on until I leaned of it from Stephen Colbert: Link: https://youtu.be/2jp0WVtoXX0 But it’s been mentioned elsewhere, including local television news, for example wherever this is: Link: https://youtu.be/A0YpuCcX0h0 by … Continue reading
A few months ago I quoted the aphorism “never attribute malice to what can adequately be explained by stupidity,” and was asked for its source. I had to confess that I had no idea, but I’ve since managed to look … Continue reading
Fear not, no spoilers or even a review below, just one incredibly picky gripe. Sunday night I watched the third episode of season 7 of Game of Thrones, and one of the main actors, as well as one of the … Continue reading
The latest issue of Sky & Telescope has a short article by astronomy professor Andrew Franknoi on a project to address the high cost of college textbooks. OpenStax, a non-profit based at Rice University, has commissioned a series of new … Continue reading
Suppose you’re designing a language course. All else being equal, you’d probably want to teach the most common words first, and there are a number of references you can check for that purpose. (For example, Wikipedia’s page for the most … Continue reading
A lot of people have trouble distinguishing between with “your” and “you’re” or “whose” and “who’s.” Many years ago I realized there’s a simple rule for remembering which is which. I still get them wrong, but at least I can … Continue reading
The parts compose the whole. The whole comprises its parts. That’s a useful pair of words, but unfortunately “comprise” has come to be used as a sort of redundant synonym for “compose.” In fact, nowadays one probably encounters the verb … Continue reading
A lot of people don’t especially care about grammar, usage, and style as long as they get their message across. If you’re one of them, just ignore me when I go off on the subject. A lot of this stuff … Continue reading