Well, if you are, who could blame you? 

I have found these three words confounding to just about everybody. Recently an organization asked me to review their web site content. I found all three of those “sure” words on one page; one of them was used correctly. It’s no wonder people have trouble. The words are so similar in spelling and pronunciation and even in meaning, and they’re all just ordinary, useful words that find their way, appropriately, into our daily vocabulary.

. . .  but How Much Communication?

Recently I was riding a Seattle metro bus along with a friend who visits this Speakeasy regularly and follows the conversation. Shortly after we boarded, the bus stopped to admit a bevy of eight young teenage girls, immediately effecting a complete change in the volume within the bus. Oh, the streaming! Oh, the volume! The cacophony!

I’m a political news junkie. I admit it. I kicked the sugar dependency, I can limit myself to four ounces of wine each evening, and I refuse all opiates for the rare pain I might have, but I suck up political news and reporting and “speeching” like nobody I know. I watch it all. (Yes, I’m of that generation that still has a thing in her living room called a television.) How bad is my affliction? I watched ALL the debates.

I know what you’re thinking: “There are a myriad of ways to use that word.” If your mind immediately goes to “of” after “myriad,” just stop it, please! That construction, which we hear at every turn, is just plain wrong. I heard it again this afternoon; I hear it almost everyday. A beautiful Greek word that means, literally, ten thousand, has been adopted – and very poorly – by just about every Tom, Nick and Shari.