The art of the "."

geneman06 · Post by **geneman06** » Sun Mar 02, 2008 3:59 pm

Twice within 24hrs, i've seen people writing, ".02 cents". This has been driving me CRAZY! .02 cents is 2/100 or 1/50 of a penny. America and most of the World has since done away with the use of fractions of a penny. It's .02 Dollars, or 2 cents!!!!!!

windshieldbug · Post by **windshieldbug** » Sun Mar 02, 2008 4:07 pm

geneman06 wrote:.02 cents

How many sense does THAT take!?

Kevin Hendrick · Post by **Kevin Hendrick** » Sun Mar 02, 2008 4:10 pm

Cents-less, isn't it? There are (obviously | obliviously) folks that don't get the (decimal) point ... on the other hand, some probably *are* aware of the difference and are offering an honest assessment of the value of their advice!

iiipopes · Post by **iiipopes** » Sun Mar 02, 2008 11:19 pm

Close behind that one is people who talk about speed in terms of "miles an hour." Are they driving for only one hour? Rate is correctly expressed by the term "miles per hour."

There are some more common errors of grammar and syntax that really peeve me, but that is just the one that comes to mind.

Just my 2Â¢ worth.

Kevin Hendrick · Post by **Kevin Hendrick** » Mon Mar 03, 2008 3:00 am

cktuba wrote:Why don't they just go all the way and add warsh and aks.

They had to save something for the next "addition" ...

k001k47 · Post by **k001k47** » Mon Mar 03, 2008 3:10 am

.02 cents

iiipopes · Post by **iiipopes** » Mon Mar 03, 2008 8:56 am

cktuba wrote:Speaking of pet peeves... two that rank pretty high with me are... irregardless and normalcy. Arrrggggghhhh, the correct terms are regardless and normality. Of course the good people at Webster have decided that these are now words, because so many people use them mistakenly. Why don't they just go all the way and add warsh and aks.

Actually, "normalcy" is actually a word now adopted into the language, although you are correct that "normality" is preferred. "Return to Normalcy" was the slogan for the Warren G. Harding 1920 Presidential campaign in reaction to the heavy costs of WWI:

http://www.britannica.com/eb/article-91 ... 98990.hook

Rick F · Post by **Rick F** » Mon Mar 03, 2008 10:08 am

I think I may have been guilty of using the .02 cents a time or two. I won't do that again.

A pet peeve I have is the often used phrase... "at this point in time". It's... "at this point" or... "at this time", but not both. Talk about redundant!

windshieldbug · Post by **windshieldbug** » Mon Mar 03, 2008 10:44 am

bloke wrote:a .75% tuba or a .150% tuba?

iiipopes · Post by **iiipopes** » Mon Mar 03, 2008 1:06 pm

cktuba wrote:Yes, I knew the story of it's adoption into the language. But, basically, Harding just made up a word to replace a perfectly good (preexisting) word. In essence it is slang and should be treated as such. The fact that it's initial usage was derived from a President of the United States doesn't change that fact... I mean, really, should we add nuculer to the dictionary as well?

I know that the English language must grow to accommodate new objects and concepts... but just making up words to replace perfectly good existing words... that's mis-usage of the language.

I agree.

sungfw · Post by **sungfw** » Wed Mar 05, 2008 4:39 pm

cktuba wrote:But, basically, Harding just made up a word to replace a perfectly good (preexisting) word.

Uh ... no.

The Compact Edition of the Oxford English Dictionary Â©1971, p. 1942, includes two citations for "normalcy," one dating from 1857 (eight years before Harding was born), the other from 1893 (27 years before Harding used the term).

And wikipedia has this to say about "normalcy."

iiipopes · Post by **iiipopes** » Thu Mar 06, 2008 7:34 am

OK, if Harding or his campaign manager didn't make it up, they at least made the word well known.

Rick Denney · Post by **Rick Denney** » Thu Mar 06, 2008 12:35 pm

New words appear in the language all the time, and have done so for centuries. Go back and read, say, Arthur Conan Doyle, and see how much the language has changed in a little over a hundred years. Then go back further and read John Bunyan. Another century further back will get you to Shakespeare, which most people can't read clearly today. If you really hate language innovation, then read Chaucer in the original and tell me what you think. The only way I could get much out of The Canterbury Tales in the original Middle English was to read it aloud. The alphabet we use isn't even completely the same.

Every change has been castigated by those who believe that dictionaries should be prescriptive rather than descriptive. Samuel Johnson, who wrote the first popular English dictionary, would not have happily tolerated such rigidity. For him, a dictionary was a work of art as much as scholarship, and his dictionary says as much about him as it does about English.

I don't like "irregardless" any better than the next guy, because it's rooted in a mistake. But I use contractions all the time, which used to also be substandard for non-dialogue writing. "Normalcy", on the other hand, is a perfectly good new word. Harding's slogan would not have had the same ring to it if it had been "Return to Normality". English is full of words that mean basically the same thing, an artifact of having pulled in vocabularies from the Saxons, Angles, Normans, Romans, and whoever else happened to be around.

Rick "mourning the loss of vocabulary rather than the migration of it" Denney

windshieldbug · Post by **windshieldbug** » Thu Mar 06, 2008 1:57 pm

Rick Denney wrote:mourning the loss of vocabulary rather than the migration of it

wut hE sed!

OldsRecording · Post by **OldsRecording** » Thu Mar 06, 2008 3:07 pm

Another thing that bugs the crap out of me is when people use 'your' when they really mean 'you're'. As in "Your really stupid, ain't you?"

TubaRay · Post by **TubaRay** » Thu Mar 06, 2008 5:19 pm

OldsRecording wrote:Another thing that bugs the crap out of me is when people use 'your' when they really mean 'you're'. As in "Your really stupid, ain't you?"

Agreed. This is one of many misused words. And how did you know about my stupidity? Ain't that being rude?

Kevin Hendrick · Post by **Kevin Hendrick** » Thu Mar 06, 2008 5:39 pm

TubaRay wrote:
OldsRecording wrote:Another thing that bugs the crap out of me is when people use 'your' when they really mean 'you're'. As in "Your really stupid, ain't you?"
Agreed. This is one of many misused words. And how did you know about my stupidity? Ain't that being rude?

Why, yes ... yes it am!

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The art of the "."

The art of the "."

Re: The art of the "."

Ordure of magnitude ;-)