So, like, you know … depending on your status as an established lexicon may determine weather or not you care to precede. Perhaps you could care less, or could you not? Whose to know? For all intensive purposes, it shouldn’t matter. If that wasn’t painful enough, read on. You, dear reader, were just fooled five times.
Words are useful stuff. Term papers, interviews and Scrabble tournaments all benefit from a firm grasp on the English language. The pretentious freshman in your philosophy class might benefit from saying “like” less when attempting to make a point they don’t fully understand. And all of the journalists-in-training at American University would be remiss in casting aside common terms.

Anyways … you could care less, right? That is, until you learn that anyway does not end in “s” and realize that you could not care less about a language lesson in a magazine. When a friend says they could care less, you should ask them, how?

For all intents and purposes, there is a point we are heading toward, but not towards. A great vocabulary may earn you compliments, but a firm grasp of the basics will complement any and all expressive ornaments that you hang on regular conversations.

This might feel like an elementary exercise until you find yourself sitting up some night, starting at the blinking computer cursor resting in the middle of your research paper and not knowing if the sentence you just wrote makes any coherent sense. At least, if your individual words make sense, you are on your way to success.
Alright (not a word), it’s all right if you don’t articulate things quite perfectly when talking to your friends. But the intended effect of this piece is to affect your language just enough for you to make intelligible sense when it really matters.

Except for any pretensions that may have surfaced unintentionally, the reader ought to accept this treatise willingly and abide by the laws of English. The magazine could have (not “of”) published only a list of terms, but we hope that this discreet attempt tricked you somewhat into learning a discrete lesson.
The next time you write an AIM message to your friend in all lowercase letters, using those stpd txt msg abbrev., please make sure you use at least a few actual words. Here’s a handy list for you to print out, pin on your wall and reference to impress your friends.
Irregardless – Not only is that not a word, it is redundant. The word is just “regardless,” which has two fewer letters to worry about.

Patronize – According to the third edition of the American Heritage College dic-tion-ary this means, “to treat in a condescending manner.” It does not mean to try to fool someone by lying to him or her. That’s just called “being an ass.”

Irony – Now we get back to that know-it-all freshman in your philosophy class. Irony has several connotations to be aware of, and we must give a nod to Socrates. He was a big fan of poking fun at his students. Usually, only the reader is in on it with Socrates and finds it funny. That is classic Socratic irony. Our friends at the dictionary give us this: “The use of words to express something different from and often opposite to their literal meaning.” The house falling on the Wicked Witch’s sister wasn’t ironic; it was just a bummer.