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