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On Public Broadcasting, no less, the reporters seem to have a new favorite descriptive phrase : " a wide array."
Makes my teeth itch. My Oxford CD has strictly military meanings and Atomica says its sometimes an elaborate arrangement.
I'm sure the modifying of "unique" has been discussed ad nauseum
Also on my list is the practice of referring to what you hope will be an annual event as a First Annual.
Anyone care to jump in?
wow
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Carpal Tunnel
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I dislike the use of 'effect' as a verb. I've brought this up before, and found out it is in effective use as a verb. But it sounds so close to affect, which is a verb
98% of the time, that I think people are going to start using them interchangeably. Grr.
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Pooh-Bah
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Pooh-Bah
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Yep, 'fraid so, Jackie. I am already finding the two words interchanged in many of the essays I mark - and this, friends, is not a reflection on the youth of today - the essays that are handed to me are written by "mature students," typically people in their mid-forties and upward.
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Pooh-Bah
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Pooh-Bah
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" a wide array."
Makes my teeth itch. My Oxford CD has strictly military meanings and Atomica says its sometimes an elaborate arrangement.
The Concise OED that lives in my study has considerably more meanings that that, both as a verb and as a noun.
"To dress or adorn with display" v.t. or "an imposing or well-ordered series of persons or things" n
So "a wide array" doesn't sound too bad to me!
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old hand
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old hand
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the essays that are handed to me are written by "mature students," typically people in their mid-forties and upward.Just because people are "mature students" shouldn't mean that they learned to spell any better than us young folk. Some people, both young and old, just don't care if things are spelled quite correctly - or punctuated correctly. (I DO care, by the way.) Otherwise "mature" shop owners wouldn't write things like: potato's - .99¢/ lb (which would imply 100 pounds to the dollar) 
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Carpal Tunnel
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The Commando stated : "an imposing or well-ordered series of persons or things" So "a wide array" doesn't sound too bad to me!
So you would say "a wide series?"
wow
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Bean adds: potato's* - .99¢/ lb
I am always tempted to demand that they sell them to me at that price. Somehow I don't think I'd get very far.
Not to mention the ubiquitous apostrophe s plural. My favorite 's plural was on on a dumpster. Bulldog Box'es
*Ænigma "corrected" this to potatoes. Possibly the only case of Ænigma doing the right thing!
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Anonymous
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This is undoubtedly a YART, but it drives me nuts when people incorrectly insert an apostrophe into "its" to indicate possession.
bridget=)
Ipsa scientia potestas est ~Bacon
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old hand
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old hand
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This is undoubtedly a YART, but it drives me nuts when people incorrectly insert an apostrophe into "its" to indicate possession.
The sick thing is, I have seen it so often recently that I have to look twice sometimes to determine when it's correct or not!
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Pooh-Bah
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>So "a wide array" doesn't sound too bad to me! Nor me. Is is Britspeak perhaps? PS I heard someone apologising for the radio transmission being halted "momentarily" today after there had been a two second gap in the broadcast. It made me smile. 
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Carpal Tunnel
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insert an apostrophe into "its" to indicate possession.
I've come to like it; it keeps me from reading too fast to digest the sentence properly.
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addict
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addict
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The best?/worst? use of the apostrophe that I've seen was Xma's.
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Pooh-Bah
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Pooh-Bah
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Xma's
Reminds me of the radio ad for holiday porno I heard: Let's put the X back in Xmas!
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Carpal Tunnel
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Let's put the X back in Xmas!
Dear Sparteye: Don't do it, I'm too old for an X rated Xmas.wwh
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stranger
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stranger
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How about businessspeak "I am going to GROW this company".
Ugh, ugh, ugh
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stranger
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stranger
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My teeth ache when I hear "I am going to GROW my company". I imagine a guy in a three piece suit, with a building and logo erupting out of his head.
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Carpal Tunnel
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The X in Xmas is very, very old. It's the Greek letter chi as in Xpictos (that's Xpucm in Russian).
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Pooh-Bah
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wow asks, So you would say "a wide series?"
Probably "an extensive series" rather than wide. The words aren't totally interchangeable, but I feel that they are near enough in meaning to be used in very similar contexts to convey the same idea.
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Pooh-Bah
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Dianne, I do so agree with you. Indeed, it is a grows misuse of the verb. 
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Anonymous
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Dianne, I do so agree with you. Indeed, it is a grows misuse of the verb *grown*  bridget=) Ipsa scientia potestas est ~Bacon
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Carpal Tunnel
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wendalyn finally got around to tackling 'momentarily' today... I will post the link momentarily. http://www.randomhouse.com/wotd/
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Carpal Tunnel
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tsuwm, will you be suing this wendalyn character for trademark violation?
Actually (sic), I'm not quite convinced that using momentarily for 'in a moment' is entirely original to North America.
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Carpal Tunnel
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quirkily, I was only able to register 'actually' on a very local basis....
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addict
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Lately I've been hypersensitive to people using "hopefully" to mean "I hope". As in "Hopefully the weather will be nice this weekend." I suspect it's already a lost battle, but I continue fighting it hopefully.
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Carpal Tunnel
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And hopefully you'll win.
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Lately I've been hypersensitive to people using "hopefully" to mean "I hope". I find myself muttering "adverb, adverb, adverb" over that one, too! It's beeen going on so long, tho, I fear we are in for more disappointment.
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Carpal Tunnel
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hopelessly, this is a lost cause. (hi ASp)
consider the sorts of usage help you find in places like alt.english.usage
The disputed, passive use of "hopefully" is often referred to as
"sentence-modifying"; but it can also modify a single word, as is
hopefully clear from this example. :-) Most adverbs that can modify
sentences -- including "apparently", "clearly", "curiously",
"evidently", "fortunately", "ironically", "mercifully", "sadly", and
the "-ably" examples above -- can be converted into "It is apparent
that", etc. But a few adverbs are used in a way that instead must
be construed with an ellipsis of "to speak" or "speaking". These
include "briefly" (the OED has citations of "briefly" used in this
way from 1514 on, including one from Shakespeare), "seriously"
(1644; used by Fowler in his article DIDACTICISM in MEU), "strictly"
(1680), "roughly" (1841), "frankly" (1847), "honestly" (1898),
"hopefully", and "thankfully". Acquisition of such a use is far
from automatic; for example, no one uses "fearfully" in a manner
analogous to "hopefully".
AHD3 says: "It might have been expected that the flurry of
objections to _hopefully_ would have subsided once the usage became
well established. Instead, increased currency of the usage appears
only to have made the critics more adamant. In the 1969 Usage Panel
survey the usage was acceptable to 44 percent of the Panel; in the
most recent survey [1992] it was acceptable to only 27 percent.
[...] Yet the Panel has not shown any signs of becoming generally
more conservative: in the very same survey panelists were disposed
to accept once-vilified usages such as the employment of _contact_
and _host_ as verbs." AHD3 quotes William Safire as saying: "The
word 'hopefully' has become the litmus test to determine whether one
is a language snob or a language slob."
The OED's first citation for "hopefully" in the passive sense (= "It is to be hoped that") is from 1932...
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