don't you love it when you learn something new....

i learned today that the word 'blog' is a shortened version of the term 'weblog'.........cool huh! and dictionary.com has 8 listings for it's definition: the one i like is an online diary or chronology of thoughts - guess mine is kinda both!

i find it amazing how quickly certain words or expressions become part of our daily language.....you know what i'm talking about right? words like blog is one of them.....kinda scary too that until today whilst i knew what it meant, i couldn't have provided a definition to anyone who asked. scarier still was that until about 9 months ago when a recent uni graduate starting working in our CIO's office and started a 'blog' for him, i had absolutely no idea what a blog was!

it's interesting how some people use these words that quickly make it into the everyday vernacular, even though it is clear when they are talking that they have NO idea what they mean......often they will mispronounce the word (guess sometimes that will be a genuine error, for which they can be forgiven), but more often than not, in my experience people simply use the word in the wrong context.........

when i started tonights 'post' i had NO idea what i would talk about but as you can see a theme has emerged.....my pet hates:

1) anything and something are spelled with a 'g' not a 'k' - it's not anythink, or somethink - seriously it's not that hard!

2) ask is spelled ASK and not AKS - again it's not that difficult - maybe they don't cover this in English classes anymore?

3) my other favourite is 'pacific' and i don't mean the body of water that lies between here and the USA, i mean the word that a lot of people use when they mean specific...........really, how hard is it?

4) the other thing that really gets up my nose are some of the buzz phrases that people use - i have no idea if people in the real world (and by that i mean those that don't find themselves prostituing themselves to a corporation in order to pay their mortgage each month) use these expressions but these are some of the more frequently used 'phrases' at my workplace right now:

- think outside the box
- let's socialise that idea
- adding value
- on the same page
- skin in the game

seriously, have we forgotten that we speak english??? and that the english language is a very comprehensive one with many options for the construction of clearly worded sentences, without having to resort to ridiculous buzz phrases that are not only ambiguous but ridiculous??? don't people realise that instead of creating their own little phrases, they could simply consult a thesaurus.....where they might actually learn something.

here endeth todays lesson