To be clear, I meant that the rule about they/them probably came from the same impulse to snobify English, not necessarily from Latin.

I used to investigate card fraud and disputes. I’m not comfortable offering expertise because it’s been almost a decade and those regulations have changed a lot. I will say, however, that generally speaking, the words fraud and unauthorized are both overused and misused by cardholders and specifically mean “I had…

FWIW, I have friends who are linguists who like to point out that a lot of our grammatic rules come from the mid-19th century when a lot of newly posh Brits decided to whip the language into shape (and distinguish themselves from the common rabble) by stealing rules from Latin. This is where we get things like not…

The public school grammarian in me still bristles at the singular they, but I’m working on getting over it. Its use since the 1300s is a good point: singular they predates anything you’d recognize as the English language, and has been in and out of style but never out of usage.

I wasn’t exactly a parm snob, but I didn’t get a lot of powdered cheese growing up because my mom likes to buy a wedge of Parmesan and blitzes it to smithereens it in a food processor. I was well into my 30s before I started buying shaker parm, and you’re right: sometimes the cheap stuff outshines the good stuff.

Gilmore Girls fan?

I understand the value of a good endorsement but this kind of thing just seems too risky to be worthwhile. Of course, the PR people who put it together probably only vaguely remember being bored by a few excerpts from Beowulf in high school... I bet if you asked the screenwriters (wait, Neil Gaiman was involved with…

...and this will hopefully use up the rest of the mirin from my (now over) katsu donburi kick.

I made a point of commenting on this after I finally got around to making it it because I remembered the comments being full of skepticism over whether this would be any good, but I must be misremembering because everybody seems pretty excited to try it.

Let’s just say I never *lose* any vacation. I've been lucky enough to be employed by organizations that allow me to carry over some time (not a lot; there's a limit). I always carry some over, but not much.

I’m surprised you’re getting so much pushback from other commenters. I, too, was a fan of Starbucks’ protein boxes, or at least, I was until they revamped their rewards program so that people like me couldn’t game it so effectively.

I hate to come in and say “disagree so hard” when everbody else is already commenting to say that they disagree so hard, but I disagree so hard.

Damn, how do you split those hairs so thin?

Smartphone games come close to filling that need, but sometimes I just want to mindlessly mash buttons for a couple of minutes, hitting home runs or beating up baddies, without having to worry about killing my phone’s battery, waiting for app updates, or all the other distractions of modern gaming.

Ah, yes, the time-honored tradition of paying off libraries. Sorry kid, we gotta cut you off at Prisoner of Azkaban because Aunt Becky’s kid checked out Goblet of Fire last week, and we want to keep the rest of the series available to her.

I stand by my oft-repeated assertion that Chik-Fil-A should just buckle down on their religious affiliation by changing their name to JFC.

Maybe I’m misusing the term #MeToo. What I'm referring to is how after the accusation, we all re-examined his work and realized that his feminism is very selective.

I really don’t understand all the hate for this comment in the grays. Good on you for knowing what your principles are and standing by them. It’s true that nobody gives a crap about them, but nobody gives a crap about anybody else’s disdain for your principles either.

Re: CarFax, I’ve never seen a car ad with the report linked, but any reputable dealership either has it on file or will pull it for you. I’m not sure when this became standard practice; the advice I received in 2001 when I bought my first car was “buy the report from CarFax”, with my second car in 2006 it was “you’ll…

Condolences on misusing the good Parmesan. That same recipe had attracted my attention because it hits the right ratio of flavors I like, minimal effort, and barely-disguised junk food. I went grocery shopping last night and Megan Splawn had almost convinced me to plan an extra meal, but I’d already promised to make…