Putting two spaces after a period creates "rivers" of white space crawling down the printed page, which can be quite distracting from the content.-gailr Odd to say my eyes get the opposite effect- I see sentences crashing into each other without a 2nd space. Must have been a lot of typewr...

Actually, most dictionaries list both pronunciations but all give kiBOSH second place. None of us here in PA, including those of us from NC have heard the second pronunciation (that we recall), so we still go with the preferred pronunciation. It would be nice to do a survey to get some data on this...

Hi Pandora, I'm just opening this box because I don't see a punctuation topic anywhere else and just wanted to note how ironic it is that the program we all use here to muse about language closes up the requisite two spaces between the period and the next sentence into one space and there doesn't se...

This original post is reminding me of the old AltaVista game, where some well-known text is dumped into the AltaVista translator bot, pureed into, say, Italian, and then regurgitated back to English. I remember the lyrics to Isaac Hayes' song "Shaft" coming back something like: Who is the ...

Walt Kelly according to Wikipedia.

I saw that but I saw as many entries spelling "-ey" and, call me crazed, but I just don't fully trust Wikipedia for this fine a level of accuracy. Rowrbazzle!

Walt Kelley used it, spelling it as "blaggard" if I members kreckly. [side note: I can no longer determine whether Walt's name has one or two letters E -anyone know for certain? I know the -ey spelling is a Protestant signature (the so-called "Scotch-Irish") while -y is the Catho...

Still, with all due respect to the Good Doctor and the bad actor, I might submit we skate on thin isoglossic ice indeed if we look to Harry Morgan for the last word on pronounciationments ...so I recently watched Harry Morgan again (because somebody has to) and re-witnessed another of his gems, &qu...

I have a history of such gaffes, often with foreign loanwords (especially French, like faux pas, etc). I always laugh when someone from my church pronounces Abednego as Abendego... Or how 'bout substituting Cavalry for Calvary ? I hear this from singers. Learning a new word from written text is alw...

I thought of my THEater mistake as soon as I posted it. There's no problem with emphasis, but rather that the a is pronounced like the a in lake instead of the a in about.

Methinks you mean the emphasis as in the-AY-ter...?

I have a "Southern" habit of saying PERmit, to mean a license, and perMIT to mean I will allow you to do something. Actually, I thought that was just using English correctly, but here in Pennsylvania, everybody (especially my husband) says perMIT to mean go get your perMIT to drive. Also ...

And that yes "an" was used before words started with vowels...or with silent initial consonents. I say "a hotel" = pronounced with a "long A" That's how i was taught, Any in agreement? Karen (schooled in NY city) does it matter? When reading scripts for radio voiceover...

Long ago I used to refer to a college classmate from Baltimore as a Baltimoron. Alas, I found out later I wasn't the first. Reporter, editor, author and Baltimore native H. L. Menken used the same adjective/proper noun for his fellow denizens of the city. In my defense I can only say that great min...

During a political corruption trial years ago in Maryland, one of the defendants was quoted as saying "Let's not beat a dead horse to death." That could work, in context... Calls to mind a quote from an unknown politician sometime somewhere in England (real specific, sorry) who, during a ...

I have to agree with AdoAnnie. I'm from England originally (although I live in Georgia now), and I remember having "Breakfast," "Lunch," and "Tea" also. But if we did have a later evening meal, it was usually called "Supper." The word "Supper" tends...

I've always been curious why things or people from Ecuador are called "Ecuadorian". Seems to refer to a place called Ecuadoria; why isn't the logical adjective Ecuadoran ? True, we put an -ian on Brazil, but that's kind of springing off the L where the tongue wants to go. The R seems not t...