Many English-speaking people have little appreciation of what a wonderful gift their language is.  Partly because it incorporates so many other languages, and partly because of the rich traditions of Western culture, English is the most expressive, most useful, and most powerful language in the world.  We should treasure it. That is why it irks me to see so many professional communicators misuse it.  The abusers in the news media are the people whose errors are most widely exposed to the public, but I have also seen written communications by professionals that cause me to cringe. The final straw (for me) came when several instances of the misuse of the word "decimate" were aired on television.  The term has so commonly been misused that its colloquial definition has become closer to the word "devastate" than to its actual definition.  Decimation was a punitive practice of the ancient Roman army, in which every...(Read Full Post)