Discussion Groups / English Usage / July 2009

In the recent thread about towel(l)ing, Peter Duncanson quoted a
passage from /The Times/:
"Children under 14 are being hit hardest and the NHS was told to
plan for a worst-case scenario of up to half of all children being

Ben Stephenson, the BBC's Controller of Drama Commissioning, declared
in a left-of-centre newspaper last week that the BBC should encourage
'left-of-centre thinking'. This has caused a bit of a fuss (except in
the left-of-centre newspaper, which still hasn't noticed that there

Would you know what compound type "creature comfort" is?
Is "should" in
"why all age-groups should find our
Age quite so repulsive"

To assist a programmer writing supporting firmware....
You have an external data storage device connected locally to a
system.
What verb(s) would you use for the process of bulk transfering data

Any English word for the French
concitoyen: Celui, celle qui est de la même ville, du même État qu'un
autre.
i.e. coming from the same city or state?

I note that the Wikipedia article titled, "American and British
English differences" is worth considering:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_and_British_English_differences
(All words and phrases in BLUE can be clicked to take you to other

2009.07.07
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Main_Page On this day...
<quote>
1928 – The Chillicothe Baking Company in Chillicothe, Missouri, USA,

At a junk sale I picked up a SATANIX cylinder.
Dark blue, 10-sided, with 16 lettered rings that can be turned.
<http://www.vintage-toybox.co.uk/p/product/0607240731-SATANIX+-+VIEWMAST
ER+INTERNATIONAL/>

From Safire's column.
I've heard this usage for decades if not my whole life, so "trendy"
doesn't fit as far as I'm concerned, and it doesn't sound odd to me in
the slightest.

This from some work I'm proofing:
"However, in that paper Robson did not explain how to make the
annotation data formal or structured, nor how to use genomic data in a
clinical setting, but focused instead on encoding and decoding."

I'm listening to Barack Obama read his own book, Dreams from my
Father.
I'm in section 7 of disk 3, about 55 seconds in, and I heard something
very interesting, not about Obama really but about English.  He was

Could anyone please explain what the differences between personality
and temperament are?
Thanks in advance.

She liked to dance but felt awkward ---- someone was watching her.
A) in case
B) for fear that
C) if

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