I have a hard time with the use of the word “proverbial” as “very commonplace or popular.” Like in this entry on Brand New (one of my new favorites) about the new MSNBC logo.

It succeeds in doing so and forcing you to stop trying to think about what M S N B and C stand for, however, the continued uncapitalization of corporate and brand identity — further enunciated by the proverbial Web 2.0 logos — favors form over substance, and eventually all logos will be blobby, friendly, meaningless avatars of their original meaning.

What proverb would that be? (”Bettr™ late than nevr™”?) But I checked it out in the dictionary, and that’s meaning number 2.

It still pops out at me. In my presence, you better be referring to a proverb when you say proverbial.

Enjoying a quick browse through myfavoriteword.com, I discovered someone’s chosen "fardel".  I had an English teacher in high school who required that we memorize Hamlet’s soliloquy, without which nobody would know the word "fardel".  (If Hamlet didn’t have his soliloquy, one could argue that we’d have no use for the word "soliloquy", but that’s another matter.)

Anyway, this English teacher was walking us through the special vocabulary of the soliloquy, and when he got to "fardel", he explained that it was a burden, like what you’d load up on a mule.  He said that if you were a mule, and someone put a fardel on you, you might say "hey, I don’t want that on me, I’m a mule… poor mule."

As though getting inside the head of a fardel-bearing mule would help us do better on the test.  I think about this moment in my high school education fairly frequently, so I guess this ridiculous image did stick with me, so, uh, thanks, I guess.

Link: Words beginning with F.

I’ve noticed a wierd thing about my writing / emailing lately: I can’t avoid using colons.  I try to stick to only using them to introduce lists (and indeed, they are appropriate for both lists and introducing related ideas), but I’m tempted to throw them in before every parenthetical thought that I feel is too important for parenthesis.  Or explanatory comments: this would be a good example.  I think em-dashes are more appropriate for that kind of aside or break, but I’m not brave enough to use them.

It might be related to the fact that I’m having a hard time concentrating on anything lately.  On the other hand, perhaps I’m just feeling free to write whatever, throwing in every added idea or parenthetical.  That’s an annoying habit.

So, if I’ve been sending you emails: sorry about that. 

Say, since this post is boring, I’ll include two unsolicited personal disclosures.  Feel free to jump in on the comments.

1. As a gradeschooler, I once wrote a note to my aunt Sally, and put a linebreak between my introductory sentence and its period.  I then wrote a sentence saying that I knew this was inappropriate, but that I was out of room.  Then I signed it.  That was the whole note.
2. In high school, as a big fan of Quartermann’s free-association gossip column in Electronic Gaming Monthly, I started throwing ellipses in everything I wrote.  Since that was mostly notes to friends, I don’t think much harm was done, but I must have come off as a teenage Larry King.