Steve Jobs - Angel, Devil or Just DIFFERENT?

There are some obvious ones that we've avoided until now - including the classic Apple's "Think Different" campaign. I always pretended not to notice this one, since I assumed that Apple would never err on the side of the devil. In fact, according to me, what they must have plausibly done was to use 'different' as an adjective, referring to a mystery invisible word that you have to guess. This would put them on the side of the angels. For example - "Think Different.... Transparent Blue Computers", "Think Different....Arty Farty Advertising Campaigns" etc.

Well, in last year's recent biography of Steve Jobs, it is revealed that Jobs insisted that he wanted 'different' to be used as a noun, as in 'think victory' or 'think beauty'. Except that victory and beauty are nouns. And different is, well... different. Which all goes to show Steve Jobs' inherent differentlyness. Tags: adverb

The Earth is FLAT

The Boston Globe, just the other day in 2006, published a piece called "Adverb is as Adverb Does". Their pitch is that it's still an adverb if it fulfills the job of an adverb (i.e. modifying a verb), and using an adjective in that role is called the 'flat adverb'. Apparently, in the annals of history, the flat adverb was a common event. It is undeniable true that many pirates used to say "Me hearties, I be terrible thirsty for a tot o' rum!" But then officious linguistic pedants managed to civilize our society, turning water into wine by winningly employing the suffix -ly. Until today. But regardless of the trend to abolish this usage, it would be foolish to criticize anyone re-employing the flat adverb, since if it walks like a duck then it must still be an adverb. So there we have our lesson on history and progress. The Earth was flat, then it wasn't, and now it certain is again. For surely. Tags: adverb