A Nice Way to Avoid Swearing

We’re not supposed to use the Lord’s name in vain (vain means things of no value). So when you want to express a big emotion about something of not much consequence, what do you say? The usual soluiton is a minced oath, such as “darn” and “gosh.” Here we have a whole phrase, not merely a word:

What minced oaths do you use? I like to say “holy cow—excuse the hindu expression.”

Subscribe to this blog's RSS feed

First the comic, second panel:

I picture astronomical as a reference to something very large. Maybe she meant that the odds against willing are astronomical.

How would you write it to be unambigous?

Huh?

• Redundancy is when you repeat something and the repeat is unnecessary. So “return back” is a redundancy. “Back” is redundant because it’s unnecessary; all you need is “return.”
• A Tautology is when you say something twice. It refers to the repetition, not to whether the two (or more) words have an unnecessary word. Yes, the distinction is subtle.

Here’s a good example of a tautology. If you think about it, the two parts say the same thing! (no limit=weren’t restricted)

Of course, the not-obvious tautology is what makes the comic funny.

This comic is completely wrong. Nice pun at the end, though.

Generally we write out the single-digit numbers, and we write the digits of longer numbers. But sometimes we want to spell out a longer number. The correct way to spell out a two-digit number is to put a hyphen between the spelled-out digits (and use “and” for decimals). So 27 is twenty–seven when you write it out.

Even longer numbers are written out as separate words, so 275 is two hundred seventy-five. (Not two hundred and seventy-five, because “and” means decimal point.)

I remember this lesson from first grade! The general rule with numbers is “and” means the decimal point. You can tell which “and” is incorrect, right?

Should be “a hundred seven dollars and fifty cents.”