I enjoy some reality tv shows, but I never really got into The Apprentice; it just seemed a bit arbitrary to me to have participants compete and yet have their fates nonetheless decided by Trump. But, I was amused by this mocking assessment of the Apprentices at MSNBC. In particular, it seems that they have a tough time speaking English clearly:

Wes thinks “utilize” sounds more businesslike than “use,” when actually it only sounds more pretentious. Recent college grad Andy busted out some Latin with the phrase “ad hoc,” but didn’t seem to know its actual meaning. Fragile Elizabeth suggested “download[ing] all our ideas” instead of just saying “write everything down,” then sprained her tongue with the non-word “deprioritize.” And Ivana … well, what corporate blather hasn’t Ivana used? […]

The author seems a bit surprised and disgusted that these “overeducated MBAs trip over themselves to prove their expertise in the high-powered corporate sphere”. Really, I’m not terribly surprised at their foibles; having worked in the corporate world long enough, I’ve run across plenty of blowhards who think that big words can inflate their stature. Fortunately, my current job is much more down-to-earth and with hardly a peep of marketing-speak in the office.

I'm subscribed to The Word Spy’s mailing list — they feature new words and phrases used in print (though only those that can be substantiated across multiple sources). And I was amused by their recent entry for the “man cave”:

man cave
n. An area of a house, such as a basement, workshop, or garage, where a man can be alone with his power tools and projects.

Example Citation:

The basement or garage has become such a special place for special man-projects that DIY is even devoting special programming to it: “My Ultimate Workshop,” a one-hour special scheduled for May, looks at tricked-out garages and basements where guys hone their crafts, be it woodworking, car restoration, wine collecting or model-train building.

So how did the man cave make such a transformation? The experts said there are several factors at play: more disposable income, better gadgets on the market for trading up, keeping up with the Joneses and the post-9/11 cocooning factor.

— “Cave dwelling,” Chicago Tribune, March 23, 2004

I can really relate to the idea of a man cave. After all, with two geeks living here, just about our whole apartment is an extended man cave. Just last weekend, I transformed our living room into an impromptu computer assembly station — I built my new PC beside the sliding glass door there so that I could make use of the available light.

Reading over a Slashdot article on Google’s new look, the discussion somehow turned to quoting conventions and cardshark2001 pointed out that British and American quoting styles differ.

The site points out that in the US, “periods and commas go inside quotation marks regardless of logic”. However, the British apparently include punctuation such as commas and question marks inside the quotation when it makes more sense to do so. For instance, there’s an entirely different meaning (to me) between these arrangements:

• I’d rather not rent “Dude, Where’s My Car?”.
• I’d rather not rent “Dude, Where’s My Car”?

Eric S Raymond also talks more about this in the section on Hacker Writing Style of the Jargon File where he confirms that “Hart’s Rules and the Oxford Dictionary for Writers and Editors call the hacker-like style ‘new’ or ‘logical’ quoting”. In any case, this “logical” style is one that I’ve adopted for some time and I’m pleased to learn that it has a grammatical backing as well.

Once again, the American Dialect Society has released its words of the year for 2003. Each year, the Society votes on words invented that year (or which gained prominence that year) and announce winners in various categories.

Given the war on Iraq, many of the words centered around that theme:

embed: verb, to place a journalist with troops or a political campaign. Noun, a journalist who is so placed.

pre-emptive self-defense: noun, an attack before a possible attack.

weapons of mass deception: plural noun, the hunt for weapons of mass destruction as a pretext for war.

Most of those aren’t much of a surprise. However, several of them were rather amusing to me. For starters, ass-hat made the list for some reason, though it seems like I had heard that on South Park for some time now.

One of my favorites, though, is probably torture lite, a term so euphemistic that only the military could have come up with that one. Then again, pre-emptive self-defense also just rubs me the wrong way as a term seemingly designated for rationalization.

Lynne Truss has a new book out about punctuation — and it’s a #1 best seller in Britain. The initial printing was 15,000, but “Eats, Shoots & Leaves” is now up to 510,000 in print. I enjoy language in any case, but the book looks appealing on its own:

There are many possible reasons for the tremendous success of “Eats, Shoots & Leaves,” a spritely volume that leads the reader through the valley of the shadow of comma splice; refers to the apostrophe as “our long-suffering little friend”; makes a rousing case for the semicolon's usefulness in, among other things, “calling a bunch of brawling commas to attention”; and describes Woodrow Wilson's inexplicable visceral hatred of the hyphen, which he called � spectacularly undermining his own argument — “the most un-American thing in the world.” […]

And, if you haven’t heard the joke about the panda going into a bar (from where the book got its title), it's explained at the end of the article ;).

(Due credit: Media Bistro’s Daily Media News newsletter)

In the comments for this Slashdot review of the book “Microsoft in the Mirror”, Prostoalex linked to his lexicon of Microsoft Jaron. It’s similar (but unrelated) to the Jargon File, but it’s specific to Jargon within Microsoft.

Some of the entries have since crept into widespread corporate use, such as bandwidth (as in “time”), but most of them were new to me. And, one of my favorites is probably “ask” as a noun:

Ask: Used as a noun, preceded by “the,” as in “What’s the ask?”, which basically means “What are you asking?”, or “What’s the bottom line?”, or, more simply, “What’s the question?” Essentially, then, a gratuitous verb-to-noun transmogrification, creating a useless synonym for question.

I can almost understand its purpose, but I still find it amusing — I almost feel like adopting it as my exclamation-of-choice (as in “What the ask?!”). Of course, that usage wouldn’t make sense in real life or even in the context of Microsoft jargon ;).

While searching for the differences between burritos and enchilasas, I came across this fascinating page on British vs American English. (And, for those curious, “An enchilada is usually open at both ends and is covered with sauce, so it would be served on a plate. A burrito is completely closed up, and is often wrapped in foil even at a place where you could eat it there, and is a little more portable.”)

Though most of the site is setup like a dictionary (an English-to-English dictionary, natch), some of the most interesting bits are from the words, phrases and abbreviations section. My favorite description is the probably this one for “hunting”:

Hunting

British English: Posh fools on horseback pursuing harmless animals with dogs while dressed up in ridiculous costumes. [Perceptive readers might possibly detect a slight prejudice in the author here :) ]

American English: People shooting large and dangerous wild animals, usually with rifles, while dressed normally and on foot.

The entry for Bed & Breakfast was also surprisingly insightful:

Bed and Breakfast

British English: Relatively inexpensive accommodation of a generally unpretentious nature provided in private homes.

American English: Very expensive accommodation provided in fairly luxurious private homes.