Usage comes first, rules comes later.
Usage comes first, rules comes later.
p.n. wrote:
In addition to the "cut and dry" thing that I groused about (above), I'm getting really tired of hearing people say "upmost" when they mean "utmost."
Oh, man, THIS.
I think the main thing is that so many people read so little (beyond texting, blog posts, email, and discussion threads) that they just never get to see the correct spellings of a lot of words.
Other topic (apologies if this has already been covered before): "jerry-built" and "jury-rigged" are correct; "jerry-rigged" (which I've seen a lot lately) and "jury-built" are not.
https://public.wsu.edu/~brians/errors/jerry.htmlp.n. wrote:
Here's another one that I'm seeing much too frequently: "cut and dry."
No, in standard educated usage the phrase is "cut and dried."
Ugh. I'm with you on this one. It's CUT AND DRIED.
Reviewing the beginning posts of this thread (from 2007) it appears that we used to be much more literate and intelligent than we are now.
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