I definitely have to agree with Bitt on this issue. I've even seen store names with terms like "very unique" inside them. When you start making grammatical errors in store names, we know that people have let the grammar slip.

Bitt, you are very justified. My mother works as an editor/researcher for National Geographic, and has done so for the last 28 years. If an author said that something was "really unique", she would call him to:
a) tell him that the phrase is incorrect
b) find out if the item is one-of-a-kind or not, then determine if unique is the word they want or not

If there was something a story described as "unique" in National Geographic that turned out to not be so, they would get countless letters. Believe me, people send in letters for the smallest details.

I agree that something like the style of the Hummer can be described as unique. There are no other cars that look anything like the Hummer except for other Hummers. Therefore the style is just plain unique, but not really unique.


And in case you're wondering, yes, as a child my school papers were always covered in red ink

I agree that something like the style of the Hummer can be described as unique. There are no other cars that look anything like the Hummer except for other Hummers. Therefore the style is just plain unique, but not really unique.


Hmm, but perhaps the use of "really" in this context is intended not to convey the level of uniqueness, but rather that in this case the "real" definition of unique should be used. It's acknowledging the dilution of the meaning of the word in general use, but saying that the speaker certainly doesn't expect any such incorrect definitions to be used when interpreting this sentence.

Maybe.

Richard.

Yeah, I think Bitt was throwing that out as a possibility earlier. We were just arguing the validity of the other intended meaning

"Hoi Polloi" you can't say "The Hoi Polloi" because "Hoi" is the Greek for " the" and you would be saying: "The the Polloi"

Something that has alternately peeved me and amused me is the frequent
duplication of the final word in a tech acronym.

These are the ones which come immediately to mind as being seen frequently.
CPU unit.
RAM memory
SIMM module
SPARC architecture
BASIC code
LAN network

And of course, at many restaurants, you can order your
french dip sandwich "with au jus."

And I'll one-up you on HTML email. I used to regularly get email from a guy (a marketroid at an old employer) that consisted solely of Word docs. With no special markup or anything -- just text. And they'd be multiple megabyte emails. For two sentences.

This is becoming common, unfortunately. I'm still fairly "old school" and don't think
email should have HTML or attachments. That's what webpages and FTP
are for after all. (But I realize that I am in a very small minority and have lost that
battle half a dozen years ago.)
But I can one up your story. A few years ago a friend sent me an email with
a 4 or 5 Meg attachment (substantial size for late 90's slow modems.)
It turned out to be a PowerPoint document. Since I received it on a Unix
workstation, I had to try to read it under our PC emulation. Of course, it
used the just-released version of PowerPoint not installed on the emulator
image yet. So I laboriously modemed it to a PC at 28.8 kbaud.
After much time and effort, it turned out to be a 1 page image which was a
party invitation. I converted it to a 50KB GIF file and sent it back to him
asking more or less "what's up with *that*, Dude?"
Turns out he had humongous bandwidth at work, assumed everyone was
running PCs with PowerPoint and had no idea that his simple image was
MS-bloated into multiple megs.

Ah, the perils of "all the world's Microsoft" thinking for those of us who aren't.

Anyway, my email filters discard anything over 100K now.
People that email me understand that.

On a related note, many email services (like American Airlines weekly specials)
don't even offer you the option of getting their email notices in non-HTML
format any more. I mean, why send 2K of destinations and fares, when
100K will do (worthless images and markup code that never change from
week to week).

Bitt,

I'm a little late to this party, but may I suggest "singular" as a close analog to "unique" ?

Calvin

Save the paper to Save the planet? The planet ain't going anywhere...

Not according to my lefty local council, who coined the slogan, they also want me to park my car at the edge of town - presumably to provide employment for car thieves in the car theft capital city of the UK - and take a sweaty, dirty, unreliable bus the rest of the way. You are as likely to see a dodo as a bicycle on the miles of cycle lanes that my taxes pay for, here.

Mind you I feel for the Empeg/Rio guys, the loony councillors of Cambridge are seriously discussing fining people for having their engines running at traffic lights.

...and it's all going to save the planet: B******s!

I have most of my mailboxes set up to drop ALL html mail, 'cos I just can't be arsed with it. Why anyone expects me to enjoy wading through the pretty pictures and formatting nonsense, I really do not know.

In email, I reckon there should be text. And punctuation. Nothing else. Then it's small, fast and easy.

Something that has alternately peeved me and amused me is the frequent
duplication of the final word in a tech acronym.

I've always cringed when people say VIN number, PIN number. etc. etc...

...or ATM machine. I can't stand that.