Stewie's Law
Irregardless, all of the sudden a whole 'nother.
1. includes / including / etc.
This word to identifies a subset of something; however its function is to provide a non-exhaustive list of examples. It implies there are other items in the set. Also, adding “but not limited to” is redundant. If you ever find yourself wanting to provide an exhaustive list of items in a set, just use “are.”
- Days of the week include Mon, Thu, and Sat.
- Days of the week are Mon, Tue, Wed, Thu, Fri, Sat, and Sun.
Generally, the best use of includes is to provide better detail of what is in the set, which provides a standard to determine what items are not in the set. In the legal context, this canon is called ejusdem generis.
- Use of the road is limited to vehicles, which includes automobiles, motorcycles, and commercial motor vehicles.
With these vehicles examples, it is clear the road is not for planes or boats. Also, it is easily defensible it excludes ground vehicles without wheels, like construction equipment or snowmobiles.
2. under / overrated
Useful, but often misused to create strawman arguments before casting subjective opinions into the ocean of general consensus:
- He suffered from a chronic case of pre-emptive consensus disorder. A man, physically incapable of disliking a movie until he had received written permission from strangers, announces, “Does anyone else think The Shawshank Redemption, The Godfather, and all other movies on IMDb’s Top Movies of All Time are overrated?” TRANSLATION: I need external validation from others when I disagree with the majority. Therefore, I have to hedge my vulnerability to save my pride (which is based on never have an original thought).
Also used in tactical deployments of Cunningham’s Law:
- She was a semantic saboteur. She planted definitions like demolition charges on the support beams of language and mocked victims. She didn’t actually care about taxonomy or definitions. Instead, enjoyment derived from watching categorization systems collapse. She knew exactly where to sever the strut of context so that a simple phrase like “A Pop-Tart is structurally a ravioli” would cause the entire architectural integrity of the culinary arts to pancake into the basement. “It is,” she clichés, “And I am tired of pretending it’s not.”
1. and / or
There is no series of things, ever, where and/or is not ambiguous. If you ever feel the need for it, break the series into conjunctive and disjunctive sets. For example:
Series Meaning A, B, or both A, B, or AB A, B, and C; or A, B, and D ABC or ABD A and B with C or D ABC or ABD If A, then B and C; if B, then C and D ABC or BCD A, B, and C, otherwise D ABC or D Any combination of A, B, and C [ ], A, B, C, AB, AC, BC, or ABC
1. Per se
No, you’re not distinguishing the intrinsic nature of something from its extrinsic qualities; you’re simply qualifying a statement about something. I am willing to bet what you really mean is intrinsically, inherently, essentially, necessarily, technically, strictly, exactly, simply, alone, solely, or something similar. Misuse of per se is negligence per se. In fact, don’t use the adverbial phrase or an adverb in its place… they suck. If you do, I will find you negligent under the theory of res ipsa loquitur because adverbs hurt me.
1. Offline
Due to a non-linear prioritization of competing work-streams, the preliminary synthesis for this engagement was not finalized; I will initiate a post-session reconciliation for subsequent outreach as to not unnecessarily increase labor costs by including this engagement’s attendees unrelated to such reconciliation.
1. Personally, [redundant first-person pronoun]
Personally, for me, I’ve found that the future is just the past but happening later, which is why, from my perspective, the only way to get to tomorrow is to wait for today to stop being the present.
Existential Linguistic Failures
Literal Semantic Drift Imprisonment - Metaphorically Stop Trying to Make “Fetch” Happen.
1. Peruse
Just perused Romeo and Juliet. Delightful comedy! Those two crazy kids pretending to be dead to get out of family dinners. Had me in stitches. Shakespeare really understood happy endings.