well, this is embarrassing
Just when you think no one reads your blog, along comes a whole host of smart people who do, AND who call you on the carpet when you randomly (and incorrectly) muse in public.
Mark at
Language Log has appropriately corrected my
statement regarding the spelling of "D'oh". He points out that "Doh" is "
preferred by the OED" and that it pre-dates the Simpsons. Ah yes, the Simpsons, for
that was the usage to which I was referring:
d'oh [interjection] said when annoyed or disappointed; popularized by the character Homer Simpson in the animated television series The Simpsons, performed by Dan Castellaneta; written in the scripts as "annoyed grunt" -- Source: Webster's New Millennium Dictionary of English
If I had taken any time to expand on my thought, it would have gone something like this:
The emails I receive daily, from clients who are trying to express the work they need completed, often contain one or more misused apostrophes and/or grammar-related issues which grate on my last nerve. But without fail, every single one of these people can correctly spell Homer Simpson's "D'oh," where "correctly" means "as I've always seen it written by Matt Groening, and he should know".
Or something like that, in which case I wasn't really "wrong"...but thanks for pointing out that I pretty much was. :) It was really meant to be a random thought on how poorly our clients express themselves, and in the future I'm just going to say that...
