Cephalogenic

or, stuff that I dragged out of my head

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Location: Moncton, New Brunswick, Canada

Wednesday, January 18, 2006

Obvious

What is it with The Consumerist? Is there just one writer who makes a whole lot of common grammatical errors, or do they have a stable of them? There certainly isn't a copy editor.

This is from one of yesterday's postings:

The site itself is a horrible mess of links, lacking a predominate logo and scattering links around the main body text like so much chicken feed.

There's the word "predominate", which has a long vowel in its last syllable--it sounds exactly like "ate", or "eight"--and is a verb meaning "to prevail" or "to be of greater importance". Then there's the word "predominant", which is an adjective meaning, if it were placed in the context above, "most conspicuous". There really isn't any such word as "predominate" that has a short terminal vowel (which is to say a schwa) and acts as an adjective.

This particular mistake just makes a writer look ignernt. Or at least poorly schooled, insufficiently well-read, and editorless.

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