I love all words and enjoy painting with them. You have your structural words, your conjunctions and prepositions etc, which are your pencil sketch and give a framework to work in. Then the vocabulary is the palette range, to give definition and colour. So-called curse words are like the metallic and day-glo colours; used sparingly to add a highlight kick, but garish if relied on too heavily.
My hate, such as it is, is more with how words are used, or abused. One of the most ill-treated I've encountered since being online is "bunch", pressed into service far beyond its capacity. English has a breathtaking array of collective nouns; yet everything is described as a "bunch". Seriously, give the poor little word a rest.
Another tiny victim of grammar abuse is the fundy's favourite, "if". If God exists, then X, Y, Z. They hang everything on that innocent little word. Snip through it with "ok, if not - what then?" and the whole structure falls about their feet in a sad little heap.
My hate, such as it is, is more with how words are used, or abused. One of the most ill-treated I've encountered since being online is "bunch", pressed into service far beyond its capacity. English has a breathtaking array of collective nouns; yet everything is described as a "bunch". Seriously, give the poor little word a rest.
Another tiny victim of grammar abuse is the fundy's favourite, "if". If God exists, then X, Y, Z. They hang everything on that innocent little word. Snip through it with "ok, if not - what then?" and the whole structure falls about their feet in a sad little heap.
At the age of five, Skagra decided emphatically that God did not exist. This revelation tends to make most people in the universe who have it react in one of two ways - with relief or with despair. Only Skagra responded to it by thinking, 'Wait a second. That means there's a situation vacant.'
