Plans for today: Shop for b-day cards and gifts for Joe and Shari. Write vocab quiz for tomorrow. Correct/grade journals and paragraphs for next week. Go to piano lesson (First one ever in my life. Very exciting. Will write about tomorrow.)
Irritants (Language department.) When did everything start happening "ahead of" other things instead of simply "before" them? For example, "They had left new Orleans ahead of the hurricane?"
And where have the articles gone? I hear this sort of stuff frequently on NPR and various news shows: "FDA said…" "According to CIA…." These things are "agencies" or "administrations" ((hence the "A" in the acronym) and are countable and require a frickin’ ARTICLE, people!!! THE FDA, THE CIA…
Finally, why are the adjectives coming after the nouns? The particular phrase annoying me these days is "date certain." As in, "He wouldn’t commit to a date certain," for example, to confirm a nominee or get out of Iraq.
I know. You think it doesn’t matter. It’s simply an evolution of language. No. No. These are violations of the rules correlating with the whole breakdown of the system. I don’t have time right now to find links for the specific examples (see the very important things I must do today at the top of the post.) I do know, however, I have been hearing them for months, because they set my teeth on edge every time I hear them.
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