The Curse of the Were-editor

peregrin8 will agree with me, i'm sure, that knowing and caring about proper use of the language is a curse as well as a Holy Responsibility. because you get to the point where you want to throw bricks through the window of the store selling "Bagel's" and throttle the coworker who says "...the thing is is that..." at least once a minute, but of course you can't and don't. and when you're researching a corporate partner at work and you read this:

"Harris covers the gambit in SATCOM systems with programs in all major SATCOM mediums...",

you have to bite the fleshy part of your hand between the thumb and index finger till there's blood. "mediums" is just the salmon sauce on the Evil Avocado Mousse*.

but the (arguably) fun part of this curse is that each bloodied hand is a horror story you collect and trade off with other SNOOTs (see, and read in its entirety, here) around campfires and such, like comparing war wounds. and you all shudder involuntarily when somebody tells you of their narrow escape from the House of Faulty Parallelism, and you pat his or her shoulder, and you say, "There there."

which by way of an invitation. send me your solecisms. not your'uns per se, but those that you have run across. the most common ones i can think of off the top of my head (apart from the epidemic "there/their/they're" and "t(w)o(o)") are "staunch" for "stanch" and "peruse" meaning "skim" (though in the latter case, the error is so common as to have effectively reserved the meaning of the word). tell me some others!

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*now made with real lawyers!

addendum

which of youse knows _blackjack_? i've asked him a couple times to friend me and he havenae sae doon. i've like to have him in on this conversation. from what i've read in his lj, we're practically the same person. so somebody go holler at him.