As if the daylight savings time change wasn’t enough to contend with, Microsoft picked a bad page to have a typo. A page that many people have been accessing. What’s verion? What happens when you get two verions?

Also found this typo on a kids sports program information page. Do we get to take two classes for free? What class complements this one?

Two simple writing tips

**Stop with the Overdone Modifiers**

On Writing Well taught me to cut the use of modifiers such as “really,” “very,” “so,” and “quite.” I save those for when I *really* mean something It’s amazing how many articles I’ve edited that abused these words that they lose meaning.

**Using Only in Sentences**

An Ode to Only shows how the placement of “only” in a sentence can change meaning. For example:

She was the only child who sang in the talent show.

She was the child who only sang in the talent show.

The first one indicates no one else sang in the talent show. The second one implies others did more than sing. The advice is to “place ‘only’ as close as possible to the word or phrase it modifies. The article cites examples of reputable newspapers misuse of “only.”

Imagine how different the James Bond movie, For Your Eyes Only would be had it been “For Only Your Eyes” or “Only for Your Eyes.” All three say the same thing with the sentence having one phrase to modify. But these two don’t “sound” as good as the original title.

Pronunciation: ‘tsIt-”gIst, ‘zIt

So that’s “zight” “guise+t” like geyser only stop at the “s” and add a “t” on the end. Right?

Dallas Columnist Steve Blow [may require free registration] brought “Zeitgeist” to my attention. While reading his column, I realized I had seen this word appear often especially thanks to Google Zeitgeist, which searches for trends and patterns.

The dictionary (and Google’s Zeitgeist page) define the noun: “The general intellectual, moral, and cultural climate of an era.” The definition also says the word is often capitalized. Why? The word comes from two German words that mean “time” and “spirit.”

Steve Blow had a conversation that referred to a Dallas Morning News article that said, “…and NBC has a winner with its zeitgeist series Heroes.” Does that make sense to you? Not to me.

I did a search for zeitgeist on the newspaper’s web site and surprisingly found many articles using the word. A sampling:

“YouTube is the latest Web site to emerge as the symbol and focal point of a zeitgeist.”

“First, a follow-up from last week’s rant about Wikipedia. Must have been something in the Zeitgeist last week.”

” The group’s million-selling 1994 debut, Rubberneck, captured the post-grunge zeitgeist with seething tunes…”

After reading these articles, I still can’t figure out how I would use it in a sentence. Are these even used correctly?

The word is a nice one with its interesting spelling and pronunciation. But it isn’t one we can use everyday. Blow thinks it’s one of those words people use to impress others. Whether people used it right or wrong, Google gets it with its Zeigeist tool.

When I created the Grammar Gotchas page a few years ago, I had hoped to creat a resource similar to the one at Innocent English. It didn’t work out, but sites like these fill the gap for us grammar geeks. Occasionally, I find a This Is Broken post that involves a language boo boo.

I’m all for recycling, but these classified ads aren’t worth it.

* Toilet Paper

* Tombstone

* Dentures

* Partially-eaten Turkey

Be sure to check out the other ads. Are they for real?

Non-Bush fans will appreciate the site’s capture of a TV caption, “Bush: One of the Worst Disasters to hit the U.S.” Here are more Bush bloopers and Bushisms.

Can you write a bad story on purpose? USA Today offers you an opportunity to see if you can write a worse story than the guy who pleased judges with his bad writing.

Here’s a resource to help you get started with lousy English: Common Errors in English. Feel free to commit the errors covered in the reference.

Analyzing Eggcorns and Snowclones, and Challenging Strunk and White looks at Language Log, a blog covering linguistic boo boos. My kind of place. The article talks of eggcorns, “a type of slip of the ear in which people mishear a word and mispronounce it, then insist that the malapropism is correct.”

Maybe I’m obtuse, but I don’t see why it’s called eggcorn instead of malaprop? But then I checked out the definition of malaprop: “the unintentional misuse of a word by confusion with one that sounds similar.” So an eggcorn is a malaprop done on purpose whereas a malaprop is more of a slip, perhaps Freudian in some cases.

I’ve never forgotten learning about malaprop from Mrs. Malaprop, a character in The Rivals who mixed up words that eventually became a dictionary word.

I checked out the blog along with other mentioned blogs on the topic. Oy. How to make time for another high quality blog? Nonetheless, this entry caught my eye: “Funly?”

Eggcorn has its own site. The bloggers and folks behind these resources are talented and knowledgeable. One thing annoys me: the Linguistic Log uses gray text. That’s difficult to read on a white background. Black is OK, folks.

Yeah, yeah, I know my visited links are gray and some of the blog has gray text. I’m hoping to get that fixed.