Sunday, September 23, 2007

It's very unique

I read in the paper about a "blog" on "unnecessary" quotation marks -- ones that are grammatically incorrect but have been added for some strange reason. It's hilarious and oh so sadly true. I work with words all day in many languages and see way too many over used quotation marks.

I was thinking about grammatical things that bug me. One is the use of over, instead of more than. "The committee raised over $2 million." To me, the word "over" means a state of being, such as "the balloon hovered over the field." When we talk about something that can't physically be over something else, it should be "more than."

Another is the word unique. The definition means one-of-a-kind or unparalled. So when someone says "that's very unique," he or she is adding an unnecessary modifier. It's already one-of-a-kind, it can't get more unique than that.

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