test blog #10

John McWhorter is changing my mind about language. And that is no easy thing to do. I'm a grammarphile. Word nerd, language junkie, spelling nut, stickler -- whatever you want to call it. I appreciate proper spelling and good grammar, and I cringe at all the bad grammar all around us. Apostrophe abuse drives me insane. Same for unnecessary quotation marks . Misspelled words on websites, signs, flyers, and official documents... don't get me started. Yet I also part ways with some of my fellow grammar-lovers. I believe grammar is important for writing, but not necessarily for speech -- and certainly not for casual speech. I hate seeing knowledge of grammar used to shame or exclude, or worse, as an excuse to not listen. Wmtc comment guidelines  warn readers not to correct another commenter's grammar or spelling. Even further, I believe it's perfectly all right to relax certain writing rules for casual writing. It's not necessary, in my view, to use awkward phrasing in...

You may recall, we decided to have Diego's DNA examined to see what breed mix he is. Here's what the folks at DNA My Dog have determined. Supposedly Diego is 37-74% German Shorthaired Pointer, 20-36% German Shepherd , and 1-9% Collie . I just don't get it. Diego looks nothing like a German Shorthaired Pointer . Other than his prick ears, he looks and behaves nothing like a German Shepherd. He does somewhat resemble a Smooth-Coated Collie , but that's a very small percentage. No Border Collie, although he exhibits some classic Border Collie behaviour? No Staffordshire Terrier or American Pit Bull Terrier, even though we see the bully boy in his face? No Boxer, no Mastiff? Here's Diego. Now look at images of images of German Shorthaired Pointers . Really? If you comb through dozens of images of German Shorthaired Pointers, you can find one or two pics where the colouring bears a slight resemblance. But certainly it is not the norm. Can a dog be up to 74% of one bree...