And Bob Barker reminds you to spay and neuter your Pet Peeves!

[captainsblog]

That last blast of grammaria was probably a bit much for first thing on a Monday. Mea culpa. It did get me wondering, though: which slips of the Mother Tongue you consider to be the worst, the most inexcusable, the kiss of death to a resume or query letter.

For me, at least, the nailiest nail on the blackboard is the figurative use of the word "literally." If your character "literally jumped out of your skin," I expect to see slough on the ground.  "As if" and "literally" do not go in the same sentence.

Another, less common but a not-literal nail in the coffin of my editing desk: "now-defunct." With one limited exception, it is redundant; that exception is for description set in a past time where something now defunct wasn't defunct then. As in:

I remember like it was yesterday: the evil freshmen from the Cornell dorm went into Pyramid Mall, bought a box of laundry detergent in the now-defunct Hills department store, and poured its contents into the food court fountain, causing all the old coots to break out in murmurs of "Shame!" and "Those Darn Kids!"

Any resemblance to those evil freshmen is, of course, completely misplaced. If anything, I am now one of those old coots;



But enough of mine. Leave me yours. I'll literally kill myself trying not to do them here anymore;)

----

What, still too intellectual for a Monday? Fine. It doesn't get much simpler than this:



Shot that earlier today. When we got this cat, we never really knew what the name "Tazzer" meant. Apparently, it's a rough translation of "Taijitu."

Comments

[captainsblog.livejournal.com]

Wegmans does the same thing. One more reason to love them.