I went to college and I studied English. Many people postulated that this was a dumb move on my part. I will neither agree (you're right, if I had studied, say, nursing or engineering, there is a good chance I would have a job right now and I would not be writing this) nor disagree (I truly enjoyed my time in college and loved what I did, which is the advice I heard most touted before I entered college - do what you love).
You see, I spent several years reading beautifully written novels, short stories and essays. I also spent this time writing myself and having every tiny detail scrutinized and criticized by my professors and my peers, as if the ability to write well could be beaten into a person. After years of studying words and perfecting my own writing, I have a low tolerance for seeing the English language abused. This is particularly a problem thanks to the internet and my increased exposure to your weak grasp on how words work. I think most of you have a Facebook account. Or use texting as a substitute for real conversation. Well, there seems to be a theme to this technology-based form of communication: many of you actually don't seem to understand English, including the natives speakers who were born and bred in the good ole U S of A.
This isn't going to be an angry rant about the difference between you're and your or their, they're and there because you've heard it all before and you still don't seem to get it (clue: they mean different thing and are not interchangeable based on your mood). Instead, I would like to make an effort to correct some of the bad habits you have with a few words. It's beginning to get a little out of control and I worry that these words are beyond saving. But seeing as I fancy myself a superhero of the grammatical variety, allow me to attempt to rescue them.
"Literally" is literally abused on a daily basis. In fact, The Oatmeal devoted a comic to this baffling malapropism so if you'd rather look at pretty pictures, then mosey on over there. If not, keep reading. Or don't.
"Literally" doesn't mean "figuratively." "Figuratively" is the word you're usually looking for and now that I've introduced it to your malformed vocabulary, I implore you to experiment with it. "Figuratively" is a metaphor, it's symbolic, it represents something but is not actually what is true.
"Literally" is literal. If you don't know what "literal" means then there's no hope for you and just go. You're dismissed. If you do know what "literal" means, then I've made it simple for you. "Literally" is just a few letters longer than "literal" (wow, gee! Maybe that's where the word "literally" comes from!) which you can now apply to your every day life. If you're about to say "I was so hungry that I literally went out and bought 16 meatball subs," STOP! Were those 16 meatball subs literal? Did they exist? Or did you only eat 1 meatball sub and you just decided to use those other 15 meatball subs to represent how hungry you were? What's that? You only ate one? Then you actually were figuratively so hungry that you went out to eat 1 meatball sub and then told your friends some tedious anecdote about 15 nonexistent meatball subs.
Unfortunately, "literally" doesn't have it as bad as another word that has been kidnapped and brutally assaulted by pop culture. Does this sentence sound remotely familiar to you: "I literally just saw the most random thing at the frat party!" Actually, I'm pretty sure you did not. The word you meant to use was "weird" but you've somehow decided that misusing the word "random" makes you sound more intelligent.
Here's an experiment: go and get a coin. Don't have one because you're broke like me? Then just imagine it. You do have an imagination, right? Okay, I want you to write down, 16 times, whether you think the coin will land on heads or tails. Go on, it's not a trick. Once you're done with that, I want you to drop the (figurative or literal) coin 16 times. How accurate were you? You weren't 100% spot on, though, were you? That's because which side the coin is going to land on is random. It cannot be predicted with absolute certainty
It, whatever it is, cannot be predicted, foreseen or guessed through previous patterns. Now imagine you're at that party. Some guy just took off his pants, started making helicopter noises and declared that the kitchen was infested with gnomes and that Mulder and Scully were being brought in to deal with them. This can be predicted, foreseen, or guessed. He's drunk. Drunk people are stupid people. He's being stupid, not random, and you could have guessed that he was going to degenerate into a raging moron when he told you that his favorite sport was "Beer Pong." This is why I don't like to drink or go to parties or bars or hang around with people who think beer is the answer to everything - because I can predict that something like this is going to happen. There is no reason to get out your phone and start texting everyone you know about the totally random thing you just saw, largely because no one actually cares.
In addition, please don't describe yourself, or someone else, as random. "Random" is not a personality trait. You are outgoing or belligerent or hungry for meatball subs but you are not random.
As a slave to the English language, I don't think any other word makes me want to punch you in the face more than hearing you say "ironic." It's so bad that I don't think I'm going to touch that one. In fact, I almost didn't include it because I realized that I could not convey the true meaning of irony to you because you've mangled it beyond all recognition. I'm just going to tell you this: you're using it wrong. Stop using it. If you're about to say that something is ironic, close your mouth. Count to three. Then use the word you were probably looking for: coincidental. "Ironic" does not mean "coincidental." Alanis Morissette ruined it for you.
And just because this makes my brain disintegrate into a pile of dog food, it's not "I didn't give that delicious plate of macaroni and cheese to nobody/no one." "Anybody/anyone," those are the words that you're looking for. "I didn't give that delicious plate of macaroni and cheese to anyone. I kept it to myself and shared it with no one." "Didn't" is already negative, the "no" is redundant. There's a phrase for that: a double negative.
Now excuse me. I have to settle a dispute between Who and Whom.
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