The Death of the English Language: Have's and the Have Knots.

Recall earlier, during one of my "Death of the English Language" diatribes, when I discussed the concept of "Light Years" and its common misapplication.

The term is often confused as a measure of velocity, whereas it actually represents a measure of distance. When misinterpreted, people assume that by stating something is light years away, that it applies to a time unknown but still quantifiable.

Since both time and distance are linear measurements, technically the misuse of the term is not incorrect, but usually applied incorrectly with regards to the context.

Seems like I'm nitpicking a bit doesn't' it?

That brings us to today's seat-of-my-pants tutorial on "Knots" of the nautical variety.

You'll never catch a sailor making this mistake; but many a writer has used "knots per hour", when knots is a measure of nautical miles an hour. Writing "knots per hour" is redundant and technically means "knots per hour, per hour."

Hopefully reading that made you cringe half as much as I did whilst typing it.

Thanks for reading - find a patio tonight, consume an unquantifiable number of beers on an empty stomach and vomit incontrollably on the diaper changing station in the women's bathroom as a symbol of the disgust you see in the inequality of modern child rearing methods.