More for the User's Guide

It's been a few weeks since I've posted anything — a symptom, I'm afraid, of the beginning of the semester, about which more as I find time to write.

Meanwhile, though, I'm already making notes toward a future edition of The English Language: A User's Guide, which appeared only a few weeks ago. It'll be a while before a new edition sees the light of day, but I'm already thinking of new entries on these subjects:

• -able versus -ible
  
• among, amongst; amid, amidst
  
• analysis, analyses
  
• anymore v. any more
  
• at the end of the day
  
• author as a verb
  
• brackets
  
• Notes on "colloquial"
  
• deconstruct
  
• dependant, dependent
  
• diagnosis, diagnoses
  
• "going forward" as future tense marker ("We don't know what the prices will be going forward")
  
• have went, must have went, and other past participle goofs
  
• heroin v. heroine
  
• ideology as a loose term for "thoughts" or "ideas"
  
• Is all you ever ...
  
• more perfect
  
• not prefixes (in-, a-, un-, de-, dis-); uncomfortable but discomfort; unstable but instability
  
• "philosophy" (for auto makers, &c.)
  
• portray
  
• quotation marks for emphasis, &c. (as in Dave Barry's example, try "our" hot dog's)
  
• reference as a verb
  
• sentence adverbs
  
• sometime, some time, sometimes
  
• takeaway (for important points)
  
• 'til, till, until
  
• tired metaphors:
  
  
  
  • from baseball: step up to the plate, eye on the ball
    
  • from cards: show your hand, &c.
    
  • from politics: fig leaf, litmus test, olive branch, send a message
    
  
  

Haven't figured out what I'll be saying about them, but I trust something brilliant will come to me if I just open my mind to the cosmic vibrations.