I don't know about you but I have noticed of late that the English language is now an endangered species. The rise of blogs (such as this) as well as message boards etc., has resulted in a large number of people who either in haste or in ignorance post quite atrocious examples of the written word. I do not consider myself to be a wordsmith by any manner of means, for that I would defer to my employer, an ardent student of the English language, and a strident advocate of its use, the arguments he and I get into about the use of a comma can be quite heated, who else would care? In the last year our local daily newspaper the Jacksonville Daily News posted the following headline "100s OF WORKERS TO LOOSE JOBS" it was all I could do not to rip the newspaper into teeny tiny little shards of nothingness and throw them into the wind to be carried to places unknown where perhaps the headline would have made a modicum of sense. To begin with, while I know you have space limitations 100s? 100s is not right, use a smaller font and say "hundreds." While I think I could have forgiven that transgression when I read along further and saw "to loose jobs" it was all I could do not to howl at the moon. You have to understand that this is not the first (and probably not the last) time that a newspaper has used the word "loose" as opposed to "lose" and in each instance it has driven me mad. I believe the last one that I read recently was "hundreds (at least they got that right) loose their health insurance." I am gritting my teeth and virtually drooling with anger as I type this. LOSE means to LOSE something, it means something is LOST! LOOSE, means something is LOOSE, ie, I have LOST so much weight my belt is LOOSE! The other regular transgression that is just certain to set me off into a tantrum of absolute grammatical rage is the classic Insure/Ensure. I have tried, lord knows I have tried, to impress on people that one "ensures" that something does or does not happen, but one "insures" against it happening. I have received official correspondence after official correspondence (namely bills and statements and such) with the following statement written in bold on the bottom of the bill "to insure proper credit please write the following account number on your check" It is all I can do to stop myself ripping the bill apart with my teeth to be honest. Can we all agree on this, we "ensure" that something will or will not happen, in other words "to ensure proper credit" we "insure" against something happening in other words "I am going to insure my car" please people, follow this simple rule and you will probably save my sanity, but I am not counting on it. I know you know that I spell checked this entry, the computer did not recognize the word "wordsmith" how telling is that?

PS) I would like to thank Elizabeth for her addition to the list, while it does not drive me to distraction the way the other two do, it drives her to distraction so it begs to be included, when someone says "I pacifically told him" as opposed to "specifically" Elizabeth says her usual retort is "no you did not large ocean tell him anything" which I think is cool.