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Friday, March 17, 2006 

Fun with Words

I found this cool link (I think it is cool anyway...probably because I am a nerdy dork loser) about commonly asked grammer and word questions. I have included the highlights below if you are too busy MySpacing to take the time to learn something valuable.

Q: What is the longest english word?
A: pseudopseudohypoparathyroidism (30 letters)

Q: Are there any words that rhyme with orange? What about silver?
A: No. Only paparhymes (lozenge and salver respectively)

Q: How many words are there in the English language?
A: The Second Edition of the Oxford English Dictionary contains full entries for 171,476 words in current use, and 47,156 obsolete words. To this may be added around 9,500 derivative words included as subentries. Over half of these words are nouns, about a quarter adjectives, and about a seventh verbs; the rest is made up of interjections, conjunctions, prepositions, suffixes, etc.

Q: What is the 'Oxford comma'?
A: The 'Oxford comma' is an optional comma before the word 'and' at the end of a list:
We sell books, videos, and magazines.

It is so called because it was traditionally used by printer's readers and editors at Oxford University Press. Sometimes it can be necessary for clarity when the items in the list are not single words:

These items are available in black and white, red and yellow, and blue and green.

Some people do not realize that the Oxford comma is acceptable, possibly because they were brought up with the supposed rule (which Fowler would call a 'superstition') about putting punctuation marks before and.

About me

  • I'm VP of Haterade
  • From Boise, Idaho, United States
  • Hi. I'm J. I have this blog to share my random thoughts and the random stuff I find with whoever wants to listen. If you don't like what I say or post on here, please tell me. I'd be haapy to mock, ridicule, and belittle you, your blog, any pictures you have, your poor grammar, your obviously awful taste in blogs, and anything else I can find on Google to make fun of. I will do all of these things (and more) because I am unable to handle any kind of criticism and am unable to deal with confrontation in healthy ways. Cheers.
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