Just So You Know…Some Popular Misconceptions

“Infer” means to receive an impression; “imply” means to send an impression. I infer from what you imply.

Referring to text layout – “justified” does not mean “aligned.” To "align" is to set something left, right, or center. To “justify” means to spread out the text to prevent jaggedy columns and line breaks.

Like the text of this page is justified and this one is not (see the ragged right side of the text).

Tomatoes are not vegetables and dolphins are not fish.

Fruity       Not Fish

This makes a handy refutation for anyone who likes to say "walks like a duck, talks like a duck…" Well, looks like a fish, swims like a fish…could be a dolphin.

Use "its" the way you would use "his" and "hers." No apostrophes for possessive pronouns. Only nouns. The dog’s bark is loud. Its bark is loud. His bark is loud.

"Your" is possessive. "You’re" means "you are."
You’re a churlish boor if you’re not getting your grammar on, fool.

A Neat Internet Explorer Shortcut: Say you’re going to google.com. Type only "google" into the address bar, and then hit "Ctrl-Enter." This keystroke command adds "http://www." to the front and ".com" to the back and executes the request. Isn’t that marvelous?

And Now, Your Moment of Zen:

"Education is the ability to listen to almost anything without losing your temper or your self-confidence."
— Robert Frost

(side note about "temper." A temper is something that keeps you from getting angry, a limitation of sorts. A temper is not an angry disposition, it is the very opposite. If someone has a temper, that means they’re well in control of themselves. Having a bad temper means having difficulty restraining oneself. It’s like having a bad muffler; losing it means there’s going to be a lot of noise.)