This chick ROCKS!

Grumpy Martha's Guide to Grammar and Usage

Good points everybody should follow.

Although I have a nitpicky axe to grind: affect can be a noun, as well, but it is sufficiently rarely used as such, I'll forgive the simplification.

I'm being driven insane by people who throw "utilize" around when "use" is perfectly correct, and the "irregardless" and "I could care less" errors also drive me mad.

It may be ironic-- the intended meaning being the opposite of the literal meaning.

"Utilize" and similar usages are part of contemporary corporate speech, like "implement" and "functionalize" and a whole boatload of pretentious pseudo-words that exist only to pad interoffice memos.

And it could still be worse: imagine if the preferred synonym in your workplace was "deploy."

I use the term "utilize" when describing a normally unexpected process taken to accomplish a task. E.g., "this application utilizes a unique implementation of TCL bindings to compiled shared objects residing in memory," rather than, "I used PHP."

they're some really good material there.

This authoress is certainly not above reproach. From sloppy translations of Latin to using "like" instead of "as" when needed, she makes her share of mistakes. It would literally (*wink*) be ironic (*wink*) if someone were to email her mistakes that she herself (*wink*) made.

Hi - great article, enjoyed it, however, you have a couple grammar problems in your grammar usage directions. But let me say, I much appreciate the attempt to teach the unwashed masses to stop saying "very unique" and "all new" and "I literally died." :-) I wish you had also included the abuse of the word "virtually" in the "literally" category. I hope we aren't seeing the beginning of a usage switching on these two beloved words that will leave the English language post-2010 AD with virtual meaning literal, and literal meaning virtual, so that teachers have to spend a lot of time reminding students that in the old days of the pre-2010 era, virtual meant "not real", etc. Pain in the ass.

On to the mistakes:

1. affect CAN be a noun - and is pronounced slightly different from
the verb usage - e.g., “The soldiers seen on television had been carefully chosen for blandness of affect” (Norman Mailer). (cf. http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=affect, et. al.)

2. Some problems with using "like" instead of "as", cf. "Just like it's unanimous, or it's not". A minor quibble, really, but, at least in my estimation, worth pointing out.

3. On a purely personal note, as an Old Testament scholar, I point out what is not a mistake per se, but a missed opportunity to bring in some great Biblical language. You said, "Don't say decimate if you mean obliterate. Decimate means to destroy 10 percent of something. Obliterate means to destroy something completely." I point out that you missed the opportunity to remind the world that one can also, in place of "obliterate", use "smote utterly". :-)

Cheers, and thanks for the wonderful article!

ON EDIT: DAMN!!! The email came back as "undeliverable". Must be an old article.

she's a woman :)

Back in 1992, my first year teaching, two fratboys were lab partners, and one day I overheard this snippet of conversation:

"Dude, you can't call 'em chicks. The babes really hate that!"

And he was being totally serious.

some feminist chicks get really get worked up over it, that's all.
My teacher went on a 15 min speech when some kid used the word chick in class...