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Subject:TW pet peeves and other lost causes From:Scott Herron <sherr19 -at- IDT -dot- NET> Date:Tue, 23 Sep 1997 10:28:37 -0400
From: "Robin M. Allen" <robin -dot- m -dot- allen -at- WORLDNET -dot- ATT -dot- NET>
>more than / over
> A lot (allot | alot) of people confuse these two and it drives me
> crazy. You see it everywhere, especially in tv commercials and print
> advertisements.
Well. You can Forget. About Print Advertisements. They have gone. Round
the bend. Completely. Especially. Placement of. The full Stop. And
Capitalisation.
Today's Top 10 Technical Writing Pet Peeves
=====================
SPELLING
10- definately
A big one on the 'net, and an interesting one. I think it's
a result of placing the emPHASis on the wrong syLABle when
trying to duplicate intonation in print.
9- seperate
8- sheild [very popular with engineers]
USEAGE
7- bring it there/take it here
This one is so easy to get right, I really don't understand why
it's such a common mistake.
6- most/almost [still popular even on this pedant-bedewed list]
5- Less/fewer [eternal]
4- "Refurbishing" computers [which have no upholstery]
"revamping" software [which has no leather upper]
"dilapidated" anything [which is not made of stone]
3- "Multiple" meaning "more than one"
"This product allows you to open multiple windows," it says,
and I don't see any 'multiple windows' -- just lots of single
windows. What the heck is a 'multiple window?'
2- Solutions
I am bored to tears with 'solutions.' Last June I did a text
search on the web and found 23,000 instances of 'solution' and only
600 of
'problem,' 75% of which were actually 'Year 2000 problem.' What a
wonderful world we live in where there's so many solutions to so
few problems!
Last year someone said to a colleague of mine, "Thanks for
_solutioning_ that [problem] for us."
1- ", well," meaning "LOOK OUT! Here comes the punch line!"
--
Scott Herron | sherr19 -at- idt -dot- net
Uh. . . Word 97 stinks. There. Now I'm on-topic.
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