A home is already forever

Heard this on a radio advertisement for my local SPCA. They have animals waiting for a "forever home." Nothing grates on my nerves more than someone thinking a perfectly good word needs some sort of modification because they believe the general public doesn't understand the original one anymore.

It's different in a cheesy ad for a chocolate bar or something, but for a serious institution to do something like this, well, someone has to say something. Home means permanent already -- no need to modify it.

Just like they way anniversary is wrongly used, let's not allow "forever home" to take hold.

From my trusty Apple dictionary:

home |hōm|
noun
1 the place where one lives permanently, esp. as a member of a family or household

It's New Year's Eve -- all day long

Every year I seem to have an argument with somebody as I point out to them that there is no such thing as "New Year's Eve day," or "New Year's Eve morning."

While many like to think the eve part of the phrase denotes evening, it is in fact the entire period, or day, before New Year's Day (also applies to the Christmas holiday).

From my Apple dictionary:

eve |ēv|
noun
the day or period of time immediately before an event or occasion : on the eve of her departure he gave her a little parcel.
• the evening or day before a religious festival : the service for Passover eve.

So please just leave it at New Year's Eve. If you want to be more specific, say New Year's Eve at 12:33 p.m.

Back in the day it was what it was

For more than three decades, Lake Superior State University has been releasing a list of overused, wrongly used and annoyingly used words that came to prominence in the previous 365 days. The tradition began in 1976; these days the group that oversees the list is bombarded with suggestions from guardians of English.

In the past, phrases like "We're pregnant," "Back in the day," "It is what it is" and "blank is the new blank" have been shown the door. Words like "Sweet," "awesome" and "decimate," when they are wrongly used, generally in some new slang, have made the list. "Gitmo" was banned for sounding too much like a Japanese cartoon name and combined celebrity names like Brangelina were labelled as obnoxious by one nominator.

The full Lake Superior State University 2008 List of Banished Words is online for your viewing pleasure. The new list should be posted on New Year's Day.

Full of compliments, missing complements

As far as grammatical errors go, one of the funniest I can recall was in a job ad for a newspaper. One would think that to be among the top two or three places to expect perfect grammar (though I am sure many outside of the business would say they are not surprised at all, given what they've seen in print over the years).

But there it was, for all to see — and probably not noticed by most who read it — a strange request: "Wanted: reporter to compliment three-person newsroom."

I wanted to email them and tell them how great they were.

Right now, as I post this, there are 102 examples, some in prominent papers, where someone got it wrong and others missed it in the correction stage.

compliment: My, you look lovely today.

complement: That color complements your eyes.