Fact: There is a country north of Mexico called “The United States of America”.

Brought to you by Kewn’s World and the CIA World Factbook, but not the Kylie Minogue Fan Club.

The following paragraphs are from The Elements of Style by Strunk and White, the popular reference on proper writing in English. I don’t always agree with The Elements of Style, but this gave me a bit of a chuckle.

Like. Not to be confused for the conjunction as. Like governs nouns and pronouns; before phrases and clauses the equivalent word is as.

We spent the evening like in the old days. Chloë smells good, like a baby should.
We spent the evening as in the old days. Chloë smells good, as a baby should.

The use of like for as has its defenders; they argue that any usage that achieves currency becomes valid automatically. This, they say, is the way the language is formed. It is and it isn’t. An expression sometimes merely enjoys a vogue, much as an article of apparel does. Like has long been widely misused by the illiterate; lately it has been taken up by the knowing and well-informed, who find it catchy, or liberating, and who use it as though they were slumming. If every word or device that achieved currency were immediately authenticated, simply on the ground of popularity, the language would be as chaotic as a ball game with no foul lines. For the student, perhaps the most useful thing to know about like is that most carefully edited publications regard its use before phrases and clauses as simple error.

The key to getting through the day is not just having a nutritious breakfast, but also giving it time to settle before you leave the house.

And now, a link to a news page.

English is a living language. This means that a new word, adopted by a significant number of speakers, becomes a part of the language. Eventually your Oxford or your Merriam–Webster will recognise that fact and put it in the dictionary. Here’s some words that haven’t made it that far yet, and hopefully never will.

Crap New Words

1. metrosexual — a heterosexual man who is interested in things such as fashion and personal grooming despite being a man. As a society, we have realised that our archetype of the straight man was grossly inadequate, similarly to how a ‘bear’ confounds the idea of a typical homosexual. So, we’ve attempted to endear to the presentable bloke with a crappy new term, despite the fact that he has been around for far longer than the gay ‘clone’ movement, or the notion that gay men are required to be effeminate. How utterly ridiculous.

2. blog — a web journal, or a verb meaning to post to or maintain the same. I’m not one to shit where I eat, but I much prefer an existing English term than a contrived one that sounds like some kind of bodily function. Incidentally, no one’s yet come up with a clever neologism for me to refer to my handwritten logs, although ‘dead tree’ is popular with monitor-baked nerds who actually think that they are saving the environment by not using paper.

3. nu-metal — a sub-genre influenced by hip hop and rock music, generally closer to the latter due to the prominence of conventional instruments. Normally I would refer to a band as either rock or metal, and leave it at that—categorising further will either yield pointless, one band genres, or bands that sound too similar to each other to bother with. However, I admit that this new genre is broad enough to cover many worthwhile bands. In any case, the ‘nu’ prefix makes this word look a bit like a Webster reject. Try ‘Neo-metal’ or just plain ‘New Metal’.

4. machinima — a movie created within a computer game, having altered the game’s code to allow the characters to function as actors. Classic examples include Blahbalicious and the Ranger Gone Bad series, made using Quake. It’s a novel adaptation of the game, and the economic advantage of using a game over a proper 3D suite is plain to see. The emerging phenomenon was referred to as ‘Quake movies’, but a new term was needed as more advanced games became available. Some anime fanboy has tied a ribbon onto that bandwagon by making this word sound more Japanese than any Japanese word actually is. If I could switch off my curmudgeonly hatred of anime for just one second, I would point out that computer games are not machines.