Posted by Rob McAninch on 01/03/06 23:04

Chris Beall>:
> Greg N. wrote:
>> Chris Beall wrote:
>>
>>> Rob started out by saying 'Pet peeve' [...]
>>
>> Interesting. English is not my mother tongue, so I might be
>> misinterpreting this... but:
>>
>> I always thought that if somebody announces a "pet peeve", he admits
>> that this is kindof an obsession of his, and that people should not
>> take the sally he is making overly serious.

That about sums it up. I frequently see i.e. and e.g. misused, I
used to use them interchangeably instead of e.g. 'ex' to denote an
example. I had no idea what they really meant and ultimately my
writing suffered because of it (ok, maybe the Usenet posts were not
that big of an impact but I was mis-using them in letters and other
documents as well).

I'm pretty sure it was someone in Usenet that pointed me to a source
on what the Latin actually meant.

>> In other words, he is saying that he is not _really_ irritated, he
>> just loves to dwell upon the given subject.

Love is perhaps too strong a word in this case;-)

--
Rob McAninch
http://rock13.com

[Back to original message]