Today’s Deep Thought:

Why isn’t “curse” a curse word?

Word of the Every So Often

curmudgeon:  (noun)  a bad-tempered, cantankerous person.  Old Man Withers was a curmudgeon who would leave his gate open just so he could chase out trespassers.

Quick Rule:  it’s

it + is or has = it’s.  That’s it.  That’s all.  If you can’t un conjugate it, then you do NOT use an apostrophe, even if it shows possession.

Today’s Deep Thought:

How many people, throughout history, have died because no one bothered to check what was downstream before pissing into the river?

Another Deep Thought:

Just because you give a phenomenon a name doesn’t mean you understand it.

Word of the Every So Often

parsimony:  (noun)  extreme frugality or stinginess.  She was so parsimonious that she wouldn’t even buy her date a glass of water.  It was their only date.

Quick Rule:  etc.

Aside from making sure you get the abbreviation correct to begin with, and aside from making sure you don’t put “and” in front of it (after all, etc. is short for “et cetera,” which means “and others,” and hopefully you wouldn’t say “and and others”)… aside from all that, just don’t use it at all.  First, you really shouldn’t use abbreviations in formal writing at all.  But more importantly, it’s pretty much stating, “Yeah, I could’ve written more, but I just don’t want to.”  That’s probably not the attitude you want to exude in your papers.

Quick Rule:  Single Quotation Marks

Single quotation marks, like ‘this,’ are only used in American English when quoting a quote.  

Word of the Every So Often

solipsism:  (noun)  The philosophical belief that the self is all that you know to exist.  My cat is a solipsist.