False positives

[simont]

These days, whenever I see (or worse still, find myself using) a noun phrase consisting of an acronym followed by a word beginning with the acronym's last letter, part of my brain twitches uncomfortably in a ‘PIN number’ sort of way – even if the last word represented by the acronym isn't the same as the following word.

I'm also beginning to feel a reflexive flash of irritation on seeing the word ‘it's’, even in many circumstances where it's being used correctly.

Subconsciouses are irritating things.

Comments

[gerald_duck]

I get that especially badly with "PDF file".

[hairyears.livejournal.com]

What (if any) is the proper plural of 'Subconscious'?

[simont]

Subconscioi. Subconsciodes. Subs-conscious. Subconsciouseseses.

[cartesiandaemon.livejournal.com]

L and I were discussing if there's any reason in english for "Bars Mitvah" :)

[fluffyrichard.livejournal.com]

I've somehow never got around to calling PINs "Personal I numbers", but it would be most satisfying to do so.

[aldabra]

I get irritation on "it's". It's highly annoying. Also, I now have to stop and think about it when I write it, when it always used to be automatically right.

(I'm slightly relieved that you're getting it too, which suggests it's natural passage of time rather than mummy-brain-death that does it.)

[kaberett.livejournal.com]

AOL. Not even necessarily passage of time...

[cartesiandaemon.livejournal.com]

I've a nagging feeling I've got worse with some mistakes after seeing them so often. (Or maybe only now become aware of them.) I know very much what you mean.

On the other hand, it might be time to try to bring some redundanyms back into the fold. People haven't objected to putting an article before "algebra" for a thousand years. Saying "I WAG guess" would be plainly wrong.

But "PIN" has become quite a phrase on its own, nearly at the point where its meaning is divorced from its combination. If you say "personal identification number" by its own, that can be quite ambiguous. People have started making PINs which are not personal, and certainly don't identify anything, and it's only a matter of time before they're not a number. So might quite legitimately want to modify "number" with "PIN", like "American American football" sounds dumb, but how else do you distinguish it from Japanese American Football?

Perhaps there ought to be a short conjunction meaning "I am repeating this word for a good reason", say, "fa", and you could say:

"Please fa RSVP"
"A personal identification fa PIN number"
"American fa american football"[1]

[1] That one is plainly correct, but "fa" has to be able to be used in those circumstanced too, because the whole point is when people might disagree.

[(Anonymous)]

Better idea: just kill all the pedants.

S.