On Wed, 2010-03-17 at 10:25 -0400, Willie Wong wrote:
> On Wed, Mar 17, 2010 at 02:05:12PM +0100, Zeerak Mustafa Waseem wrote:
> > > I don't see any need for excuses, it sounds like fine common English to
> > > me, with the possible exception of a run-on "if".
I meant to use the word apology instead of excuse, but it was late for
me too :)
> > > The full sentence was "I usually always look to see if Dale has been
> > > involved in a thread if HAL is mentioned"
> > Ah it's just using two different words that describe seeing something :-)
> > I like to think that my english is a little better. I mean it should have
> > been "see if" or "look to see whether" (as far as I remember anyway :-))
> >
> Huh, the "look to see" part, while inelegant and repetitive, is a common
> colloquialism, and I don't think was the problem. I was more thrown
> off by "usually always", which is either an oxymoron (if you take a
> strict view of the word "usually") or redundant (if you take "usually"
> to contain "always" as a subset). </pedant>
>
> (Looks like I only have off-topic contributions to this thread.)
me too.
"usually always" is also a colloquialism which means "almost always" ;)
ie. not quite always, but close to it... at least it usually always
means that.
But hey, if we were to be that picky on this list hardly anyone would be
here. That's why we have programming languages, because English is too
forgiving and fuzzy!
--
Iain Buchanan <iaindb at netspace dot net dot au>
War is like love, it always finds a way.
-- Bertolt Brecht, "Mother Courage"
