PCFormat Forum Archive

Prime wrote:so is "An honest politician" an oxymoron or a contradiction?

Stuart wrote:Many Americans do it too.

rustypup wrote:for all intensive purposes, your right... alot of americans are foreign...

rustypup wrote:

Stuart wrote:Many Americans do it too.

for all intensive purposes, your right... alot of americans are foreign...
hehehehe...

rustypup wrote:

Stuart wrote:Many Americans do it too.

for all intensive purposes, your right... alot of americans are foreign...
hehehehe...

Stuart wrote:OMG makes the Oxford English Dictionary

New initialisms in the OED

OMG and LOL, FYI

For the March 2011 release of OED Online, we have selected for publication a number of noteworthy initialisms—abbreviations consisting of the initial letters of a name or expression. Some of these—such as OMG [OMG int. (and n.) and adj.]: ‘Oh my God’ (or sometimes ‘gosh’, ‘goodness’, etc.) and LOL [LOL int. and n./2]: ‘laughing out loud’—are strongly associated with the language of electronic communications (email, texting, social networks, blogs, and so on). They join other entries of this sort: IMHO (‘in my humble opinion’) [IMHO at I n./1], TMI (‘too much information’) [TMI at T n.], and BFF (‘best friends forever’) [BFF at B n.], among others.

Of course in such a context initialisms are quicker to type than the full forms, and (in the case of text messages, or Twitter, for example) they help to say more in media where there is a limit to a number of characters one may use in a single message. OMG and LOL are found outside of electronic contexts, however; in print, and even in spoken use (see, for example, the 2003 quotation for LOL int.), where there often seems to be a bit more than simple abbreviation going on. The intention is usually to signal an informal, gossipy mode of expression, and perhaps parody the level of unreflective enthusiasm or overstatement that can sometimes appear in online discourse, while at the same time marking oneself as an ‘insider’ au fait with the forms of expression associated with the latest technology.

As such usage indicates, many people would consider these recent coinages, from the last 10 or 20 years, and associate them with a younger generation conversant with all forms of digital communications. As is often the case, OED’s research has revealed some unexpected historical perspectives: our first quotation for OMG is from a personal letter from 1917; the letters LOL had a previous life, starting in 1960, denoting an elderly woman (or ‘little old lady’; see LOL n./1); and the entry for FYI [FYI phr., adj., and n.], for example, shows it originated in the language of memoranda in 1941.

Rise of the Wag

This release also contains another initialism—an acronym, in fact (acronyms being initialisms which are pronounced as words rather than letter by letter)—less connected to online media, although it is certainly used on them. Wag [WAG n./4] is notable for the extremely fast journey from its introduction to the language to its use as usual English vocabulary. In 2002, the Sunday Telegraph reported that the staff at the England footballers’ pre-World Cup training camp referred to the players’ partners collectively as ‘Wags’, from the initial letters of ‘wives and girlfriends’. The term then remained relatively dormant, except for a small and brief revival around the time of Euro 2004, before the 2006 World Cup in Germany saw an explosion of usage, as the women, including Victoria Beckham and Colleen McLoughlin (now Colleen Rooney), had a high profile of their own, and were a visible element (especially to the media) of the England team’s presence in their base, Baden-Baden. Debates raged in the newspapers about whether the women’s presence was ‘distracting’ the footballers, alongside an equal fascination with what they were buying and wearing.

Such was the exposure the term received in this period that it became a byword for the female partners of male professionals (in football and in other spheres), often connoting a glamorous or extravagant lifestyle and a high media profile. By 2007, as the OED’s quotation paragraph shows, a general readership could be expected to understand sentences such as ‘dresses that, unless you're a Wag, are best worn with small heels instead of stilettos’ and ‘And not only did the darts WAGs attend tournaments, they had to do so without drinking’; sentences that, ten years ago, would have been utterly baffling. It is quite uncommon for new words to reach such a level of ubiquity in such a short time after their first appearance, and that the word Wag has done so perhaps demonstrates not so much its own inherent usefulness or catchiness as the influence that the print media, especially in its coverage of big stories such as the World Cup, can still have on the ways in which language is used, even in the age of social networking.
Graeme Diamond, OED

Oh teacher, I fear that I misunderstood
whether I should use well, or if I should use good.
If roses had noses then how would they smell?
Would they smell good or would they smell well?

• Remember to never split an infinitive.
• A preposition is something never to end a sentence with.
• The passive voice should never be used.
• Avoid run-on sentences they are hard to read.
• Don't use no double negatives.
• Use the semicolon properly, always use it where it is appropriate; and never where it isn't.
• Reserve the apostrophe for it's proper use and omit it when its not needed.
• Do not put statements in the negative form.
• Verbs has to agree with their subjects.
• No sentence fragments.
• Proofread carefully to see if you words out.
• Avoid commas, that are not necessary.
• If you reread your work, you can find on rereading a great deal of repetition can be avoided by rereading and editing.
• A writer must not shift your point of view.
• Eschew dialect, irregardless.
• And don't start a sentence with a conjunction.
• Don't overuse exclamation marks!!!
• Place pronouns as close as possible, especially in long sentences, as of 10 or more words, to their antecedents.
• Hyphenate between sy-llables and avoid un-necessary hyphens.
• Write all adverbial forms correct.
• Don't use contractions in formal writing.
• Writing carefully, dangling participles must be avoided.
• It is incumbent on us to avoid archaisms.
• If any word is improper at the end of a sentence, a linking verb is.
• Steer clear of incorrect forms of verbs that have snuck in the language.
• Take the bull by the hand and avoid mixing metaphors.
• Avoid trendy locutions that sound flaky.
• Never, ever use repetitive redundancies.
• Everyone should be careful to use a singular pronoun with singular nouns in their writing.
• If I've told you once, I've told you a thousand times, resist hyperbole.
• Also, avoid awkward or affected alliteration.
• Don't string too many prepositional phrases together unless you are walking through the valley of the shadow of death.
• Always pick on the correct idiom.
• "Avoid overuse of 'quotation "marks."'"
• The adverb always follows the verb.
• Last but not least, avoid cliches like the plague; They're old hat; seek viable alternatives.
• Never use a long word when a diminutive one will do.
• Employ the vernacular.
• Eschew ampersands & abbreviations, etc.
• Parenthetical remarks (however relevant) are unnecessary.
• Contractions aren't necessary.
• Foreign words and phrases are not apropos.
• One should never generalize.
• Eliminate quotations. As Ralph Waldo Emerson said, "I hate quotations. Tell me what you know."
• Comparisons are as bad as cliches.
• Don't be redundant; don't use more words than necessary; it's highly superfluous.
• Be more or less specific.
• Understatement is always best.
• One-word sentences? Eliminate.
• Analogies in writing are like feathers on a snake.
• Go around the barn at high noon to avoid colloquialisms.
• Who needs rhetorical questions?
• Exaggeration is a billion times worse than understatement.
• capitalize every sentence and remember always end it with a point