A few words seem redundant and unnecessary. For example, why do we need eggcorn — "a word or phrase that results from a mishearing or misinterpretation of another, an element of the original being substituted for one that sounds very similar or identical" — when we already have mondegreen — "a word or phrase resulting from a misinterpretation of a word or phrase that has been heard"? And why are so many acronyms, like BFF (best friends forever), LMAO (laughing my ass off), and TTYL (talk to you later), becoming words in their own right, when their definitions are the very words they represent?

But more disturbing is the recognition of made-up words that are closely associated with specific online services. You're unlikely to find "tweet" and "hashtag" outside Twitter, or "unfriend", "defriend", and "poke" (meaning "to attract the attention of (another member of the site) by using its 'poke' facility") elsewhere but Facebook — well, these places and the next Oxford English Dictionary, apparently.

I'm worried that these additions represent current trends and fads that have not stood the test of time. Internet memes are not words. Words have lasting power; memes do not. In a decade, will we still be tweeting and unfriending? If these concepts are words, then why not "lolcat", "fail", "pwn", or "teabag"? Perhaps as a historical document, the dictionary serves a valuable purpose of decrypting today's communications for future generations, but these terms have not yet made it into general usage.

I respect that the Interweb (it's a word — look it up!) is a powerful and practical aspect of daily life. But words that have application within a specific and proprietary context should not yet have earned their way into our lexicon.

What do you think? Am I too draconian in my desired growth of the English language? Or should the vocabulary of social media become our own?

Two common mistakes occur around DST, with the first not being unique to it. An extra 's' likes to appear at the end of certain words: going forwards, leaping backwards, moving towards. In all these instances, the last letter is extraneous and can be dropped without sacrificing meaning. The same goes for Daylight Savings Time. In this context, "saving" is an adjective describing "time", not a noun unto itself.

The second error is far more egregious as, unlike a superfluous 's', it can actually obfuscate meaning. When specifying an hour, standard time is sometimes used where daylight saving time would be correct. Since 2007 in the United States, daylight saving time starts on the second Sunday in March and ends on the first Sunday in November. DST is therefore in effect the majority of the year. During these months, the correct way to indicate 6:00 PM on the East Coast, for example, is 6:00 PM EDT, or Eastern Daylight Time — not EST. 6:00 PM EST is in fact 7:00 PM EDT, and your audience may do this mental gymnastic only to find themselves an hour late for to presentation.

An academic difference? Hardly. In May 2000, Sega invited me to a teleconference that they said would be held at 1:00 PM EST, even though at that point in the year, daylight saving time was clearly in effect. I assumed their acronym to be in error and so dialed into the conference at 1:00 PM EDT. Sure enough, their public relations reps were on the line and ready to break their news.

I got off the phone a half-hour later and called a fellow journalist to share what I'd learned. He was baffled: "What teleconference? The call isn't until 2:00 PM. Maybe you're just confused and are mistaking some rumors you read online for the conference?" He and several others had taken the EST timestamp to heart, and the Sega reps had to play a recording of their conference an hour after it was held for all the latecomers.

Rarely are my efforts to point out this error understood. When a director told me that his movie will be on television at 6:00 PM EST, I asked him, "EST or EDT?" He failed to clarify the matter when he wrote back, "Eastern." Others, not understanding what EDT means, stubbornly insist EST.

If you can't be correct, then be vague. Can't remember what the acronyms mean, or which one goes with what time of year? Use neither. Just say "Eastern", and your readers will understand you to mean whatever the hour currently is in that time zone.

We know how to prevent the heartache of DST; follow these simple tips to avoid the headache as well.

I can only imagine the apoplectic rage to which this Nazi would've been driven had he instead encountered the characters of The Onion's recent news report, "Pickup Truck Stoled":

LOGANSPORT, IN—Right out there, right in plain damn sight, a pickup truck got stoled last night out by the Murphy place, sources done reported Thursday.

According to eyewitnesses who seen it parked there, the truck, one of them nice Ford F-150 XLTs with the 4×4 and some real professional-type detail work that probably cost a bundle, was black.

"Everyone knows that's my truck. Why'd someone go and take it?" said owner Dale Hest, 35, the stepson of ol' Otto Murphy. "I just don't get it."

While it is important to both write and speak proper grammar, lest one convey an image akin to this victim of theft, one must also be careful to choose one's battles, lest the opposite extreme be attained, as in the above video. What common errors bother you or trip you up, and which do you feel have made it into general discourse?

With all the discussion and analysis over the week-old Apple iPad and its implications for the mobile and e-reader markets, I think an important aspect has been overlooked: what would Strunk and White think of the iPad's unveiling?

Non-duplicated content from the ninety-minute press event was culled to compose the above 180-second montage. Such extreme editorial decisions will of course be slanted in its selections, with a result that's more amusing than telling. Still, the degree of rhetoric employed by Steve Jobs and his colleagues is remarkable. Would Strunk and White have us believe that so much bluster is obscuring a lack of concrete foundation?

It's no surprise that there are authors who prefer typewriters, just as there are videophiles who insist on vinyl or retrocomputer enthusiasts who use computers with 16K of memory. But what is surprising is that such antiquated production methods are still in use in modern industries.

My father was once in a similar situation when he remained committed to running his home business using the same spreadsheet software for two decades. The files were kept in a format inaccessible to his lawyers, brokers, and accountants, so information exchange was never as easy as emailing an attachment; more often, he had to print the files himself, and sometimes then bring them to a printshop to be concatenated into a single larger document. He was tolerated as a client because he'd been with these firms since before Microsoft Office was standardized. Everyone breathed a sigh of relief when his computer finally gave out, forcing his upgrade to a modern platform.

I suspect the same is true of Mr. McCarthy, who has been a published author since 1965; his track record has earned him a leeway that would not be afforded to fledging writers. The likelihood of one of his novels being a success is worth the added cost of hiring a transcriptionist to convert his work to digital format.

Still, the cost of such unwavering technological devotion must at some point be question — as the New York Post did earlier this year when it reported that the New York City police department had spent a million dollars on new typewriters. Much of the police department's work has been computerized, but, as evidenced by these bills, a few artifacts remain. Wouldn't this money be better spent on bringing our civil servants into the 20th century? Typewriters may be fine for the entertainment industry, but the time and cost of accommodating diehards like Mr. McCarthy is not a luxury our government may always have.

Though I'm personally a fan of these images, I do think they've gone a bit far, as it's apparently not enough for cats to be cute and funny; they need to be spiritual, too. A full-scale effort is underway to translate to this pidgin English that most popular of texts: the Holy Bible. Observe the Annunciation as the Angel Gabriel proclaims Mary to be the mother of God:

Ceiling Cat sended Gabriel, a hovr d00d, to Nazareth (dat is a citi in Galilee) to a virgn naemd Mary. She wuz engajded to a d00d naemd Joseph. Gabriel wuz liek "O hai Mary, u iz realli nice. Ceiling Cat iz wif u." Mary wuz kiend of worrid about dat. But teh hovr d00d wuz all "Doant be afraid. Ceiling Cat iz happi wif u. U iz gonna hav a kittn. Naem him Jesus. He wil be graet. He wil be teh kittn of Ceiling Cat an his daddi will give him David's chaer. He wil r00l Jacob's house forevr."

… If that just doesn't leave you speechless, I don't know what will. I'm by no means religiously opposed to this project, but it does beg the questions: Why? Who has the time to adapt this material? And can I have some of that time? Certainly my day doesn't have enough hours for my own writing…

(Hat tip to Angela Gunn)